ROBERT C. CHAMBERS, Chief District Judge.
Pending before the Court is Plaintiffs' Motion for Leave to File First Amended Master Consolidated Class Action Complaint (hereinafter the Consolidated Complaint). ECF No. 381 in 3:13-6529; ECF No. 304 in 3:13-14207; ECF No. 267 in 3:13-20976. In their motion, Plaintiffs seek to consolidate the above-styled cases into a single action. In the Consolidated Complaint, Plaintiffs also move to add sixteen named Plaintiffs, new factual allegations, and new and revived claims. In addition, Plaintiffs removed the names and claims of six existing Plaintiffs. Ford does not oppose the filing of a Consolidated Complaint as to the existing Plaintiffs, but it does oppose the addition of the sixteen new Plaintiffs and argues that eighty-one claims in the Consolidated Complaint must be dismissed pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Ford also argues that Plaintiffs should be required to use Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to dismiss any of the existing named Plaintiffs. For the following reasons, the Court
Plaintiffs filed these three separate Class Action Complaints in 2013. Thereafter, Ford moved to dismiss all three Complaints. On March 31, 2014, the Court granted, in part, and denied, in part, Ford's motions. Following the Court's decision, the parties disagreed about whether eighty-nine of the claims survived the Court's March 31 decision. The parties briefed the disputed claims, and this Court entered a Memorandum Opinion and Order on November 14, 2014, further delineating what claims survived and what claims were dismissed. In the interim period, Plaintiffs filed a Motion for Leave to File First Amended Master Consolidated Class Action Complaint on May 27, 2014. The Court denied the motion without prejudice on July 25, 2014. The current motion was filed on March 27, 2015. Ford responded on May 1, 2015, and Plaintiffs replied on June 5, 2015. The motion is now ripe for consideration.
Initially, the Court must address whether Plaintiffs may join the sixteen proposed Plaintiffs under Rules 15 and 20 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See Hinson v. Norwest Fin. S.C., Inc., 239 F.3d 611, 618 (4th Cir. 2001) (stating "a court determining whether to grant a motion to amend to join additional plaintiffs must consider both the general principles of amendment provided by Rule 15(a) and also the more specific joinder provisions of Rule 20(a)" (citation omitted)). When an opposing party does not give written consent for a complaint to be amended after a responsive pleading has been filed, Rule 15(a)(2) permits the court to grant leave to amend and leave should be freely given "when justice so requires." Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2), in part. Although Rule 15(a)(2) encourages leniency in granting leave to amend, it is limited by justice and may be denied if an amendment would create, for instance, unfair prejudice to the non-moving party, undue delay, futility, or waste of judicial resources. See Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962) (Legitimate reasons to deny leave to amend include undue delay, futility, bad faith or dilatory motive of the movant, and unfair prejudice to the non-moving party.); Mayfield v Nat'l Ass'n for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc., 674 F.3d 369, 379 (4th Cir. 2012) (stating "a request to amend should only be denied if one of three facts is present: `the amendment would be prejudicial to the opposing party, there has been bad faith on the part of the moving party, or amendment would be futile'" (citation omitted)).
Pursuant to Rule 20(a), "[p]ersons may join in one action as plaintiffs if:
In this case, Plaintiffs insist that the addition of sixteen new Plaintiffs meets the requirements of both Rule 15 and Rule 20. In support, Plaintiffs assert that those seeking to join the litigation are from States that either had, or continue to have, a named Plaintiff in one of the three actions filed.
Upon consideration of the motion, the Court is very cognizant of the lenient standard under Rule 15(a) and the policy of promoting trial convenience and preventing multiple lawsuits under Rule 20. However, both Rules are tempered, and motions may be denied, when amendments result in unfair prejudice to the non-moving party. Here, the Court finds that Ford will be unfairly and substantially prejudiced by the addition of these proposed Plaintiffs at this stage in the litigation. As mentioned by Ford, these actions were filed over two years ago. Adding new Plaintiffs here is not simply the substitution of a successor or the addition of individuals directly involved a specific transaction with a defendant. Over the course of these two years, the parties have engaged in complex, rigorous, contentious, and very expensive discovery, necessitated by claims asserted by dozens of Plaintiffs from many different States. The parties also have engaged in an extensive and complex motions practice, which has involved, inter alia, determining which Plaintiffs and what claims can proceed. Although it is true that there is overlap amongst the claims and legal theories of the proposed Plaintiffs and the existing Plaintiffs, Ford still will be required to conduct extensive and expensive discovery on each new Plaintiff's claims. The fact that more than one Plaintiff may live in a particular State does not alleviate the necessity that Ford will have to travel to those States to conduct such discovery. The Court agrees with Ford that the addition of these proposed Plaintiffs essentially will hit the reset button to this litigation to a significant extent. Additionally, the Court has no doubt that joining these proposed Plaintiffs inevitably will delay resolution of this matter. Thus, for these reasons, the Court
In the proposed Consolidated Complaint, Plaintiffs omit the names and claims of six previously named Plaintiffs: Mills Allison with South Carolina claims
In their Consolidated Complaint, Plaintiffs also seek to include additional factual allegations and new and revived claims. As the Court has denied Plaintiffs' motion to the extent they seek to add new Plaintiffs, the Court
Finally, Ford makes a number of specific arguments that certain individual claims must be dismissed on a variety of grounds. Some of those arguments are now moot because they are directed at claims asserted by the proposed Plaintiffs which, for the reasons stated above, shall not be included in the Consolidated Complaint. As to the remainder of the arguments directed at the claims of current Plaintiffs, the Court
Accordingly, for the foregoing reasons, the Court
Therefore, the Court
The Court