A.S. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.

769 F.3d 204, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19267, 2014 WL 5033045
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedOctober 9, 2014
Docket14-1229
StatusPublished
Cited by93 cases

This text of 769 F.3d 204 (A.S. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
A.S. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 769 F.3d 204, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19267, 2014 WL 5033045 (3d Cir. 2014).

Opinion

OPINION

SHWARTZ, Circuit Judge.

A.S. and Sallee Miller (“Plaintiffs”) filed suit in Pennsylvania state court against GlaxoSmithKline LLC (“GSK”) claiming that its drug, Paxil, caused birth defects. GSK removed the case to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The District Court 1 remanded the case, finding that GSK was a citizen of Pennsylvania and therefore ineligible to remove the case. After remand, our Court decided Johnson v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 724 F.3d 337 (3d Cir.2013), in which we held that GSK was a citizen of Delaware. Within thirty days of our decision, GSK re-removed the case. This time, the District Court denied the motion to remand and certified its order for interlocutory review pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) to allow this Court to determine the propriety of re-removal. For the reasons set forth herein, we hold that the second removal was untimely, and we will reverse the order denying remand *207 and direct that the District Court remand this case to state court.

I

On September 30, 2011, A.S., who suffers from a congenital birth defect, and his mother, Sallee Miller, who ingested Paxil while pregnant, sued GSK in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. App. 82-84. The complaint alleged that all parties were citizens of Pennsylvania. App. 53, 84-85. GSK removed the case within thirty days of receipt of the complaint based upon diversity. On Plaintiffs’ motion, the case was consolidated with a number of other Paxil cases before a district court judge who had previously held that GSK was a citizen of Pennsylvania. Consistent with that holding, the District Court remanded’ this case along with the other consolidated cases to state court, holding that GSK was a citizen of Pennsylvania and could not remove a case from Pennsylvania state court to federal court. Patton ex rel. Daniels-Patton v. Smith-Kline Beecham Corp., CIV.A. 11-5965, 2011 WL 6210724, at *5 (E.D.Pa. Dec. 14, 2011). The same judge also issued an opinion identical to Patton in Maldonado ex rel. Maldonado v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 841 F.Supp.2d 890 (E.D.Pa.2011), which remanded twenty-one other Paxil cases to state court. This case returned to state court on January 4, 2012. A.S. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 2:11-cv-6641 (E.D.Pa. Jan. 4, 2012).

On June 7, 2013, this Court issued Johnson, which held that GSK was a citizen of Delaware. Johnson, 724 F.3d at 360. In reaching that holding, this Court explicitly rejected the reasoning in Patton, Maldonado, and the District Court’s similar decision in Brewer v. SmithKline Beacham Corp., 774 F.Supp.2d 720, 722 (E.D.Pa. 2011).

Less than thirty days after the Johnson decision, GSK filed a second notice of removal in this case and in eight other cases with the same procedural posture. App. 29-48. The various plaintiffs filed motions to remand, arguing that the removal was untimely. App. 319. These motions yielded inconsistent opinions. The first case holding that removal was proper was Gud-deck v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 957 F.Supp.2d 622 (E.D.Pa.2013). In Guddeck, the District Court noted that there was “no dispute that the parties are of diverse citizenship” after Johnson, that the amount-in-controversy requirement was satisfied, and that GSK was not an in-state defendant. Id. at 623. Guddeck also held that Johnson established that the case was “erroneously remanded” after the first removal, Johnson “provided a new and different ground for a second notice of removal,” and GSK’s second “removal notice [was] simply effectuating what was a timely and proper first removal.” Id. at 625-26. The District Court in this case adopted Guddeck’s reasoning and denied Plaintiffs’ motion to remand. App. 2-3.

After the rulings in Guddeck and this case, more judges in the Eastern District weighed in. One denied remand in two of the nine cases presenting the same issue, relying on the reasoning in Guddeck. See M.N. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., No. 2:13-cv-3695-RB, Dkt. 17 (E.D.Pa. Aug. 7, 2013); I.C. v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., No. 2:13-cv-3681-RB, Dkt. 22 (E.D.Pa. Aug. 9, 2013). Two judges disagreed and granted the motions to remand. See Cammarota ex rel. Hallock v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., CIV.A. 13-3677, 2013 WL 4787305 (E.D.Pa. Sept. 9, 2013), reconsideration denied, CIV.A. 13-3677, 2013 WL 6632523 (E.D.Pa. Dec. 16, 2013); Powell ex rel. Powell v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., CIV.A. 13-3693, 2013 WL 5377852 (E.D.Pa. Sept. 26, 2013).

*208 After the District Court denied remand, this case was transferred to the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where Plaintiffs filed a motion to certify for interlocutory appeal the following question: whether a defendant may remove a case a second time based on diversity jurisdiction more than one year after the commencement of the case? App. 4. The District Court certified the question for appeal, which this Court accepted pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b).

II

This Court has jurisdiction to address not only the certified question but “any issue fairly included within the certified order,” Johnson, 724 F.3d at 345 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted), and “may consider all grounds that might require reversal of the order from which the parties appeal.” Doe v. Am. Red Cross, 14 F.3d 196, 199 (3d Cir.1993). Thus, this interlocutory appeal requires this Court to determine whether removal was proper and whether the order denying remand was correct. As this appeal raises only legal issues, our review is de novo. Ario v. Underwriting Members of Syndicate 53 at Lloyds for 1998 Year of Account, 618 F.3d 277, 287 (3d Cir.2010).

III

We will first review the removal provisions at issue. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a), defendants may generally remove civil actions from state court to federal district court so long as the district court would have had subject-matter jurisdiction had the case been originally filed before it. 2 When a case is removable under § 1441(a), and a plaintiff seeks remand, the plaintiff must identify a provision that prohibits removal. Breuer v. Jim’s Concrete of Brevard, Inc., 538 U.S. 691, 695-96, 123 S.Ct. 1882, 155 L.Ed.2d 923 (2003). “[Rjemoval statutes ‘are to be strictly construed against removal and all doubts should be resolved in favor of remand.’ ” Batoff v.

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769 F.3d 204, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19267, 2014 WL 5033045, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/as-v-smithkline-beecham-corp-ca3-2014.