Champion Power Equipment Incorporated v. Firman Power Equipment Incorporated
Opinion
1 WO 2 3 4 5 6 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 7 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA
9 Champion Power Equipment Incorporated, No. CV-23-02371-PHX-DWL
10 Plaintiff, ORDER
11 v.
12 Firman Power Equipment Incorporated,
13 Defendant. 14 15 On February 28, 2025, the Court issued an order granting Firman’s motion to amend 16 its invalidity contentions. (Doc. 124.) Champion has, in turn, filed a motion for 17 reconsideration of that order (Doc. 133) and Firman has filed a response (Doc. 138). For 18 the reasons that follow, the motion is denied. 19 LEGAL STANDARD 20 “The Court will ordinarily deny a motion for reconsideration of an Order absent a 21 showing of manifest error or a showing of new facts or legal authority that could not have 22 been brought to its attention earlier with reasonable diligence.” LRCiv. 7.2(g)(1). 23 Reconsideration is an “extraordinary remedy” that is available only in “highly unusual 24 circumstances.” Kona Enters., Inc. v. Est. of Bishop, 229 F.3d 877, 890 (9th Cir. 2000) 25 (internal quotation marks omitted). “Motions for reconsideration are disfavored . . . and 26 are not the place for parties to make new arguments not raised in their original briefs. Nor 27 is reconsideration to be used to ask the Court to rethink what it has already thought.” 28 Motorola, Inc. v. J.B. Rodgers Mechanical Contractors, 215 F.R.D. 581, 582 (D. Ariz. 1 2003). See also FTC v. Noland, 2022 WL 901386, *3 (D. Ariz. 2022) (“Local Rule 2 7.2(g) . . . [creates] essentially the same standard a district court outside the District of 3 Arizona . . . would apply when resolving a reconsideration motion under Rule 54(b).”) 4 (citations omitted); 2 Gensler, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rules and Commentary, 5 Rule 54 (2022) (“Rule 54(b) is not a mechanism to get a ‘do over’ to try different arguments 6 or present additional evidence when the first attempt failed. Thus, while the limits 7 governing reconsideration of final judgments under Rule 59(e) do not strictly apply, courts 8 frequently invoke them as common-sense guideposts when parties seek reconsideration of 9 an interlocutory ruling under Rule 54(b). In sum, trial courts will exercise their discretion 10 to reconsider interlocutory rulings only when there is a good reason to do so, including (but 11 not limited to) the existence of newly-discovered evidence that was not previously 12 available, an intervening change in the controlling law, or a clear error rendering the initial 13 decision manifestly unjust.”). 14 DISCUSSION 15 The key disputed issue in the February 28, 2025 order was whether Firman had 16 conducted an “earlier diligent search” for prior art. (Doc. 124 at 7-10.) The Court “easily 17 conclude[d] that Firman . . . met its burden of establishing diligence” because (1) the 18 voluminous nature of Firman’s initial Invalidity Contentions was “alone strong evidence 19 that Firman acted with diligence”; (2) Firman’s evidentiary submissions regarding the 20 scope of its search “provide[d] further support for a finding of diligence”; and (3) although 21 Champion “criticize[d] the timing of Firman’s subpoena to Generac, that timing had 22 nothing to do with Firman’s inability to obtain compliance before the August 30, 2024 23 deadline for serving Invalidity Contentions [because] the ultimate hang-up was the lack of 24 a protective order, which the parties didn’t agree to until late October 2024.” (Id. at 7-9.) 25 Additionally, although Firman’s current CEO and president, Greg Montgomery 26 (“Montgomery”), was cc’d on a 2015 email that Firman obtained via its subpoena to 27 Generac (and which formed part of the basis for Firman’s amendment request), the Court 28 concluded that “Montgomery’s status as a recipient of the April 2015 email does not 1 establish a lack of diligence” because, inter alia, “[i]t is perfectly understandable that 2 Montgomery would not have grasped the significance of (or even recalled) an email on 3 which he was merely cc’d, while working for a different employer, nearly a decade earlier.” 4 (Id. at 9.) 5 In its reconsideration request, Champion focuses on Montgomery’s role while 6 working for Generac. (Doc. 133.) In a nutshell, Champion argues that “recently produced 7 documents” show that Montgomery had “extensive involvement with Generac’s multi-fuel 8 generator development,” which in turn shows that Firman should have “immediately 9 serve[d] Generac with a subpoena” and that Firman “made misleading statements” in its 10 earlier motion papers. (Id. at 1, 6-7.) Champion not only seeks reversal of the February 11 28, 2025 order but asks the Court “to also issue an order to show cause as to why Firman 12 should not be held in contempt.” (Id. at 8.) Firman opposes the reconsideration request on 13 an array of grounds. (Doc. 138.) 14 The Court agrees with Firman that reconsideration is not warranted here. Even 15 assuming the new documents on which Champion relies—which, it should be noted, were 16 available to Champion at the time it filed its response to the motion for leave to amend— 17 show that Montgomery had a more extensive role in Generac’s circa-2015 development of 18 multi-fuel generator products than Firman previously intimated, this at most shows that 19 Firman did not need to wait until early August 2024 (following the conclusion of its outside 20 search team’s search efforts) before issuing a subpoena to Generac for relevant documents 21 and instead could have relied on Montgomery’s independent recollection of his earlier 22 work at Generac to accelerate the timing of its issuance of the Generac subpoena. But even 23 if the subpoena could or should have been issued sooner, it is undisputed that Firman 24 needed to wait to obtain compliance from Generac before it could attempt to base its 25 Invalidity Contentions on the documents in Generac’s possession. And as the February 28, 26 2025 order expressly found, the “timing [of the subpoena] had nothing to do with Firman’s 27 inability to obtain compliance before the August 30, 2024 deadline . . . [because] the 28 ultimate hang-up was the lack of a protective order, which the parties didn’t agree to until 1 || late October 2024.” (Doc. 124 at 8-9.) Champion’s only fleeting attempt to address the || compliance issue is to assert in a footnote that “[t]he issuance of a formal Protective Order is a red herring because the Parties agreed on June 5, 2024, to produce confidential and AEO documents” (Doc. 133 at 2 n.1), but as Firman correctly notes in its response, 5 || “Champion and Firman’s agreement as to how and when to exchange their own documents || ahead of a protective order did not include or extend to Generac—a nonparty and direct || competitor of both Parties. Champion presents no explanation as to why Generac would 8 || have been bound by the parties’ agreement.” (Doc. 138 at 5.)! 9 Although the analysis could end there, the Court also notes that Montgomery’s || independent knowledge (or lack thereof) of the Generac documents formed only a small 11 || component of the diligence analysis set forth in the February 28, 2025 order. The finding of diligence was largely based on the voluminous nature of Firman’s initial Invalidity 13 |} Contentions and the evidence that Firman submitted to establish the extensive nature of its 14]| search process. (Doc. 124 at 7-9.) Indeed, the Court expressly noted that Montgomery’s professed failure to recall the Generac documents was “particularly inconsequential in light of the affirmative showing that Firman has made as to the robust, diligent nature of 17 || its search.” (Ud. at 9, emphasis added.) Thus, Champion’s new arguments and documents bearing on this “particularly inconsequential” point do not alter the bottom-line conclusion || that Firman acted with diligence.
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