PHILADELPHIA – In a case dating back to 2002, a federal court recently upheld its denial to a pharmaceutical firm that submitted an extensive discovery request one day before the deadline.
On April 16, U.S. District Court Judge Anita B. Brody denied Aventis’ motion for reconsideration, connected to an earlier denial of its Feb. 14 motion – which sought to compel obtaining a large swath of documents and depositions from both several governmental agencies and employees, past and present.
After the qui tam complaint from the United States (through ex-relator Yoash Gohil) against Sanofi-Aventis began in 2002, the case finally passed the motion to dismiss stage and reached the discovery phase 13 years later, in 2015.
Meanwhile, discovery lasted four years and four months, and the Court has extended discovery deadlines at least seven times. On Jan. 29, Aventis sent a flurry of subpoenas demanding depositions of nine current and former government employees in the next two weeks. When it was told that timing was “unreasonable," a follow-up motion to compel was filed just before discovery was to conclude.
“Aventis waited until the day before discovery was set to close – Feb. 14, 2020 – to file the motion to compel at issue here. Aventis sought information from the government related to the ‘materiality’ element of a False Claims Act claim. It offered no legitimate explanation for its failure to make a more timely request. Aventis had ample time to do so,” Brody said.
“The Court denied Aventis’s motion to compel because it was facially unreasonable. Aventis waited until the day before discovery closed to serve its motion. It had ample time to seek earlier discovery. It gave no reason for its delay, other than a misrepresentation that it did not know that materiality was important until the January 22, 2020 oral argument. Accordingly, the Court exercised its discretion to deny Aventis’s motion.”
Brody said there are three grounds for granting a motion for reconsideration: (1) An intervening change in the controlling law; (2) The availability of new evidence that was not available when the court entered the order in question; or (3) The need to correct a clear error of law or fact to prevent manifest injustice.
“Aventis points to no change in the controlling law, nor does it cite any new evidence. Rather, it argues that the Court committed a ‘clear error of law.’ This argument fails because Aventis fails to identify any clear error of law,” Brody stated.
“The Court did not deny Aventis’s motion to compel because it deemed materiality unimportant. It denied the motion because Aventis waited to file it until the second-to-last day of discovery, failed to explain its delay, and misrepresented that it did not know materiality was important until Jan. 22, 2020. If the discovery Aventis sought was crucial, it should have acted with diligence to obtain it. It did not do so, and that is nobody’s fault but Aventis’s.”
Brody concluded that the reconsideration motion would be denied.
“The Court…now denies Aventis’s motion for reconsideration without prejudice. This denial is without prejudice because Aventis was not aware of the Court’s reasoning when it first filed its motion for reconsideration. If Aventis chooses to do so, it may file a renewed motion for reconsideration,” Brody said.
Aventis then renewed its motion to reconsider that second denial on April 23.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:02-cv-02964
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com