Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 65
that it could not weigh in on the issue because the district court did not specify whether
its dismissal decision extended to the opt-in plaintiffs. The Eleventh Circuit opined that it
lacked appellate jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ appeal because the district court’s ruling
was not final: “Because the opt-in plaintiffs remain in the case, the district court ‘did not
resolve all claims against all parties’ and ‘issued no [appealable] final decision.” Id. at
*8.
Turning to the context of class actions brought under the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (ERISA), a Second Circuit decision from 2022 highlighted the importance
of appealing district court decisions on a timely basis. In Amara, et al. v. Cigna Corp., 53
F.4th 241 (2d Cir. 2022), the plaintiffs were pension plan participants who filed a
putative class action against their employer and their pension plan under the ERISA,
challenging their employer’s conversion from a traditional defined benefit plan to a cash
balance plan. Following a bench trial and entry of a final judgment requiring the
defendants to reform the pension plan to pay greater benefits to class members, the
district court entered post-judgment orders resolving disputes about the methodology
used to calculate the reformed pension benefits, and denying the plaintiffs’ motions for
sanctions and for equitable accounting. The plaintiffs appealed the post-judgment
methodology and sanctions orders, and the appeals were consolidated before the
Second Circuit. The defendants moved to dismiss the appeals for lack of appellate
jurisdiction. The Second Circuit held that the district court’s methodology orders were
appealable final orders no later than the date the district court resolved the relevant
dispute. Because the district court’s orders became final more than 30 days before the
plaintiffs filed their appeal, the plaintiffs appealed too late and the Second Circuit lacked
appellate jurisdiction to consider the issue. The Second Circuit further held that while it
had jurisdiction to hear the remaining issues on appeal, the district court did not abuse
its discretion in denying the plaintiffs’ motions for sanctions and for equitable
accounting. Thus, the Second Circuit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction the appeal
regarding the district court’s methodology orders, and affirmed the district court’s
sanctions and accounting orders.
Finally, a 2022 decision from the Eleventh Circuit noted that an appellant must
adequately raise a specific objection to a district court order to address the issue on
appeal. In In Re Zantac (Ranitidine) Product Liability Litigation, No. 21-10305 (11th Cir.
Nov. 7, 2022), the underlying case involved multidistrict litigation accusing
pharmaceutical manufacturers, generics makers, distributors, and pharmacies of false
advertising, failure to warn, and other claims associated with the discovery of a
carcinogen found in the popular heartburn medication Zantac (Ranitidine). The plaintiff
plumbers’ union claimed that the makers of the ranitidine products caused them
economic injury because the plaintiff paid for a product that was “economically
worthless.” In 2020, the district court dismissed the complaint with leave to amend,
finding that the lawsuit amounted to a “shotgun pleading” by lumping together dozens of
related and unrelated defendants and hundreds of alleged facts without clarifying which
allegations were tied to which counts. In a separate order, the district court tossed
without leave to amend proposed class claims under certain state laws in which there
was no named plaintiff residing in the relevant states. The plaintiff appealed the
dismissals regarding its claims against the generics maker defendants, as well as the
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
