United States Ex Rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Products, L.P.

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 12-2141
UNITED STATES, ex rel. Chinyelu Duxbury,
Relator, Appellant,
v.
ORTHO BIOTECH PRODUCTS, L.P.,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Rya W. Zobel, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Jan R. Schlichtmann for appellant.
Ethan M. Posner, with whom Patrick S. Davies, Michael M. Maya,
and Covington & Burling LLP, were on brief, for appellee.
June 12, 2013
LYNCH, Chief Judge. This is the second appeal to reach
this court in the decade-long litigation of relator Mark Duxbury's
qui tam action against defendant Ortho Biotech Products, L.P.
("OBP") for alleged violations of the federal False Claims Acts
("FCA"), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-3733, arising from OBP's marketing of
the pharmaceutical drug Procrit. Following Mark Duxbury's death in
October 2009, the district court permitted his surviving spouse,
Chinyelu Duxbury, to substitute herself as relator.
Duxbury's amended complaint alleged three separate
violations of the FCA arising from OBP's efforts to promote
Procrit, an FDA-approved medication for the treatment of certain
types of anemia, from approximately 1992 to 2003.1 The parties
voluntarily dismissed Count II of the amended complaint prior to
Duxbury's initial appeal. Thereafter, in United States ex rel.
Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Products, L.P. (Duxbury I), 579 F.3d 13(1st Cir. 2009), we affirmed the district court's dismissal of
Count III, and certain portions of Count I, for lack of subject
matter jurisdiction pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1). Id. at
34. We reversed and remanded, however, as to its determination
that Duxbury's "kickback" claims from 1992 to 1998 in Count I of
1
Procrit is the brand name for epoetin alfa, an FDA-approved
drug treatment for anemia caused by chemotherapy, chronic renal
failure, HIV, and perioperative blood loss in certain types of
surgery.
-2-
the amended complaint were not pled with sufficient particularity
under Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). Id. at 32.
On remand, the district court sensibly imposed
limitations on the scope of Duxbury's discovery for these claims
based upon its reading of Duxbury I, the FCA's statute of
limitations, and the FCA provision limiting the court's subject
matter jurisdiction to those claims as to which a relator has
"direct and independent knowledge," 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A)-(B)
(2006).2 See United States ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech
Prods., L.P., Civil No. 03-12189-RWZ, 2010 WL 3810858 (D. Mass.
Sept. 27, 2010). At the conclusion of discovery, the parties
entered a joint stipulation stating that Duxbury had not identified
any admissible evidence to support the remaining Count I claims.
The district court granted OBP's motion for summary judgment on
that basis. United States ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods.,
2
Since November 2003, when Mark Duxbury filed his original
complaint, Congress has amended the FCA's "public disclosure bar"
and "original source" provisions, see Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, tit. X, § 10104(j)(2),
124 Stat. 119, 901-02 (2010), both of which are relevant to this
appeal. Because the parties do not address these amendments, we
acknowledge but do not discuss them. Instead, the prior language
of these provisions, which remained in effect until March 22, 2010,
governs this case. See 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A)-(B) (2006);
United States ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P.
(Duxbury I), 579 F.3d 13, 16 (1st Cir. 2009); cf. Fraud Enforcement
and Recovery Act of 2009, Pub. L. No. 111-21, § 4, 123 Stat. 1617,
1621-25 (retaining prior language from 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A)-
(B) (2006)).
-3-
L.P., Civil No. 03-12189-RWZ, 2012 WL 3292870 (D. Mass. Aug. 13, 2012).
Duxbury now appeals, saying that the district court
improperly limited the Count I kickback claims as a matter of fact
and of law. We affirm.
I.
The relevant FCA provisions, facts, and procedural
history in this case are set out in some detail in Duxbury I, 579
F.3d at 16-21, and in the district court's numerous prior orders
and opinions, see, e.g., United States ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho
Biotech Prods., L.P., 551 F. Supp. 2d 100, 102-04 (D. Mass. 2008).
We narrow our present discussion to the information central to this
appeal.
A.
The FCA's qui tam provisions authorize private persons
(called "relators") to bring civil enforcement actions on behalf of
the United States against any person alleged to be in violation of
section 3729 of the Act. 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b). Qui tam complaints
are initially filed under seal, and relators must allow the
government sixty days to intervene and assume primary
responsibility for prosecuting the action. Id. § 3730(b)(2)-(3),
(c). If the government declines to intervene, a relator may
continue to pursue the action on the government's behalf. Id.
§ 3730(b)(4). "Either way, the relator is eligible to collect a
-4-
portion of any damages awarded." United States ex rel. Ondis v.
City of Woonsocket, 587 F.3d 49, 53 (1st Cir. 2009).
"Although this financial incentive encourages would-be
relators to expose fraud," United States ex rel. Poteet v. Bahler
Med., Inc., 619 F.3d 104, 107 (1st Cir. 2010), it also attracts
"'parasitic' relators who bring FCA damages claims based on
information within the public domain or that the relator did not
otherwise discover," United States ex rel. Rost v. Pfizer, Inc.,
507 F.3d 720, 727 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting United States ex rel. S.
Prawer & Co. v. Fleet Bank of Me., 24 F.3d 320, 324 (1st Cir.
1994)), overruled on other grounds by Allison Engine Co. v. United
States ex rel. Sanders, 553 U.S. 662 (2008). "Accordingly,
Congress has amended the FCA several times 'to walk a fine line
between encouraging whistle-blowing and discouraging opportunistic
behavior.'" Duxbury I, 579 F.3d at 16 (quoting S. Prawer, 24 F.3d
at 326).
To that end, the FCA's "public disclosure bar" provides
that "[n]o court shall have jurisdiction" over a qui tam action
that is based upon a prior "public disclosure of allegations or
transactions" found in any of a number of statutorily specified
sources. 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A) (2006); see Poteet, 619 F.3d at
107. There is, however, an exception to the "public disclosure
bar" for persons deemed an "original source" of the information in
question. 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A) (2006). To qualify as an
-5-
"original source," a relator must (1) have "direct and independent"
knowledge of the information supporting her claims that (2) she
"provided . . . to the Government before filing an action." Id.§ 3730(e)(4)(B) (2006); see Duxbury I, 579 F.3d at 16.
B.
In 1992, OBP hired Mark Duxbury as a Product Specialist
in its Western Division Oncology sales group. In that capacity,
and later as Regional Key Account Specialist, Duxbury was
responsible for marketing Procrit to health care providers in the
western United States, particularly in the state of Washington. On
July 20, 1998, OBP fired Duxbury for cause. See Duxbury v. Ortho
Biotech, Inc., No. 52348-1-I, 2004 WL 938588, at *1-2 (Wash. Ct.
App. May 3, 2004).
Duxbury's complaint, filed under seal in the District of
Massachusetts on November 6, 2003, and amended in October 2006,
alleged that OBP "engaged in a common nationwide scheme" to induce
Medicare providers to submit false and fraudulent reimbursement
claims for Procrit. The action was unsealed on July 12, 2005,
after the United States declined to intervene following
investigation. The amended complaint contained three counts, only
the first of which is involved in this appeal.3
3
Count II, which had been the focus of Duxbury's original
complaint, concerned OBP's purportedly fraudulent reporting to the
government of Procrit's Average Wholesale Price ("AWP"), "a
benchmark used by the Medicare program for reimbursement purposes."
Duxbury I, 579 F.3d at 17. Count II alleged that OBP marketed the
-6-
Count I of the amended complaint alleged that from
"December 1992 to the present[4]," OBP offered "kickbacks" to
healthcare providers "across the United States" to encourage them
to prescribe Procrit to their patients. "These kickbacks included
free Procrit, off-invoice discounts and cash in the form of
rebates, consulting fees, educational grants, payments to
participate in studies or trials, and advisory board honoraria."
The amended complaint further alleged that these purported
kickbacks "caused providers and hospitals to submit false claims
for payment to Medicare for Procrit" in a number of ways.5
"spread" between Procrit's reported AWP and its actual cost to
potential purchasers, and that these purchasers in turn submitted
falsely inflated claims for reimbursement to Medicare. "On June
27, 2007, the parties jointly stipulated to the dismissal of this
count." Id. at 19 n.5.
Count III in the amended complaint alleged that beginning in
1997, OBP unlawfully promoted the administration of Procrit to
oncology patients at levels approximately 33% above those approved
by the FDA. We affirmed the district court's dismissal of Count
III for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, id. at 34, and Duxbury
has not challenged that decision on appeal.
4
Duxbury has been inconsistent throughout this litigation
with regard to the temporal scope of the kickback scheme alleged in
Count I. And while the amended complaint states that OBP's
purported kickback scheme continued through "the present," Am.
Compl. ¶ 232, or until approximately October 2006, its most recent
allegation concerning kickbacks is dated April 13, 2004, id. ¶ 111.
Ultimately, the precise end date of the alleged scheme is
irrelevant to the outcome here, and for reasons we discuss later,
the district court properly limited the scope of Count I to those
allegations arising before November 6, 2003 (i.e., the filing date
of the original complaint).
5
For example, Duxbury alleged that OBP gave providers "free
[Procrit] that was indistinguishable from commercially available
[Procrit]," and did so knowing and intending that these providers
-7-
On January 17, 2007, OBP filed its motion to dismiss the
amended complaint with prejudice, which the district court granted
in full on January 28, 2008. Duxbury, 551 F. Supp. 2d at 116. As
to Count I, the district court found that (1) all of the amended
complaint's kickback allegations had been publicly disclosed in an
earlier suit, id. at 107-08; (2) Duxbury "qualifie[d] as an
original source only with regard to allegations concerning the
1992-1998 time period," id. at 109 (citing Rockwell Int'l Corp. v.
United States, 549 U.S. 457, 473-76 (2007)); and (3) none of the
1992 to 1998 kickback allegations had been pled with sufficient
particularity under Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b), id. at 114-116.
On February 29, 2008, the district court denied Duxbury's
motion for reconsideration and he appealed.
C.
In Duxbury I, 579 F.3d 13, this court largely affirmed
the district court's dismissal of the amended complaint. Like the
district court, we found that the kickback allegations supporting
Count I had been publicly disclosed in an earlier suit, id. at 21,
and that Duxbury qualified as an "original source" only for those
would seek "reimbursement [from Medicare] as if the free [Procrit]
had been purchased." Duxbury also alleged that OBP's cash and cash
equivalent gifts caused providers to submit false and fraudulent
claims under the Medicare and Medicaid anti-kickback law, 42 U.S.C.
§ 1320a-7b(b), as incorporated into the various healthcare
reimbursement forms that they submitted, see United States ex. rel.
Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P., 551 F. Supp. 2d 100, 116 (D.
Mass. 2008).
-8-
of his claims arising from 1992 to 1998 (i.e., during his
employment at OBP), id. at 28, 32. But we reversed the district
court's determination that the allegations supporting Duxbury's
claims from this period were not pled with sufficient particularity
under Rule 9(b) in the amended complaint. Id. at 29-32.
The reasons for that determination are stated in our
opinion. In short, we concluded that Duxbury had done more than
merely "suggest fraud was possible." Id. at 29-30 (quoting Rost,
507 F.3d at 733). Rather, in paragraph 211 of the amended
complaint, subsections a-h, Duxbury "set[] forth allegations of
kickbacks provided by OBP that resulted in the submission of false
claims by eight healthcare providers in the Western United States."
Id. at 30. These providers, all located in the state of
Washington, included:
(1) St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma, Washington; (2)
Rainier Oncology of Puyallap, Washington; (3) Memorial
Clinic in Olympia, Washington; (4) Western Washington
Cancer Treatment Center; (5) Mid Columbia Kidney Center
in Kennewick, Washington; (6) St. Peter's Hospital in
Olympia, Washington; (7) Memorial Clinic Oncology Group
in Washington; (8) Swedish Hospital in Seattle,
Washington.
Id. (citations omitted). As to each provider, the amended
complaint asserted that paragraph 211's allegations were based upon
Duxbury's "personal knowledge, observation and direct
communications with the accounts," R. App. 60, and furnished
specific "information as to the dates and amounts of the false
-9-
claims filed by these providers with the Medicare program,"
Duxbury I, 579 F.3d at 30.
With respect to the eight medical providers in question,
the amended complaint had reasonably set forth "the who, what,
where, and when of the allegedly false or fraudulent
representation[s]." Id. (quoting Rodi v. S. New Eng. Sch. of Law,
389 F.3d 5, 15 (1st Cir. 2004)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Moreover, these allegations were also sufficient to support
Duxbury's "claim that OBP intended to cause the submission of false
claims" by these providers. Id. at 30 (emphasis omitted); see id.
at 31 (describing paragraph 211's specific allegations as to OBP's
efforts to induce the submission of false claims).
This court held as follows:
Thus, we hold that the kickback claims attributable to
Duxbury, from the years 1992 through 1998, satisfied Rule
9(b). As the district court has jurisdiction over these
claims since Duxbury established himself as an 'original
source,' we reverse the dismissal of these claims.
Id. at 32 (emphasis added). Of some importance here, Duxbury I did
not dictate the appropriate contours for discovery on remand, and
it explicitly left to the district court the task of resolving
OBP's alternative grounds for dismissal, including its contention
that "the [FCA's] statute of limitations bar[red] most of Duxbury's
kickback claims." Id. at 32 n.7.
-10-
D.
On remand, OBP moved for an order clarifying that, in
light of the Duxbury I decision, Duxbury's remaining Count I claims
were limited both (i) temporally to an eight-month period between
November 1997 and July 1998, and (ii) geographically to the eight
Washington-based healthcare providers described in paragraph 211 of
the amended complaint. In response, Duxbury agreed that the
kickback claims accruing before November 6, 1997 were time-barred
by the FCA's six-year statute of limitations. However, he
contended that the appropriate time period for his remaining claims
spanned from approximately November 1997 to November 2003, and
that, because the amended complaint had alleged a "nationwide"
kickback scheme, the scope of his discovery for these claims should
not be geographically limited.
On September 27, 2010, the district court issued a
memorandum of decision resolving this dispute in favor of OBP. See
Duxbury, 2010 WL 3810858, at *3. As to OBP's proposed time
limitation, the district court found that the law of the case
established that Duxbury was only an original source for claims
arising during his employment at OBP, and that the court lacked
subject matter jurisdiction over any kickback claims arising after
his termination on July 20, 1998. Id. at *2-3. Moreover, with
respect to OBP's proposed geographic restriction, Duxbury only
possessed "direct and independent knowledge" of OBP's activities in
-11-
the western United States, and so "he [was] limited to discovery
pertaining to that region." Id. at *3. The district court denied
Duxbury's motion for leave to appeal the September 27 order on
February 3, 2011.
On June 13, 2011, the parties filed a Joint Statement
limiting discovery to Duxbury's Count I claims from (i) November 6,
1997 to July 20, 1998, and from (ii) five of the eight accounts
described in paragraph 211 of the amended complaint.6 The Count I
claims predicated on Duxbury's well-pled allegations as to the
other three accounts had accrued before the November 6, 1997 cut-
off imposed by the FCA's statute of limitations, and so could not
be pursued.
At the close of the discovery period, the parties filed
a stipulation with the district court stating that although they
had "conferred and cooperated with each other in good faith,"
Duxbury
ha[d] not identified and d[id] not possess any documents,
witness testimony or other admissible evidence to support
[her] remaining allegations, as limited by the Court’s
Order dated September 27, 2010, namely identification of
a specific payment that could be considered a 'kickback'
made to the accounts serviced by Mark Duxbury during
November 6, 1997 to July 20, 1998.
6
The remaining five accounts consisted of "St. Joseph's
Hospital in Tacoma, Washington; Rainier Oncology of Puyallup,
Washington; Western Washington Cancer Treatment Center in Olympia,
Washington; Memorial Clinic in Olympia, Washington; and Memorial
Clinical Oncology Group in Washington." R. App. 195.
-12-
R. App. 195-96. OBP then moved for summary judgment on the basis
of Duxbury's stipulation, which the district court granted on
August 13, 2012. Duxbury, 2012 WL 3292870, at *1.
Duxbury now appeals from that decision and from the
September 27 order limiting the scope of her Count I discovery.
II.
We review the district court's order limiting the scope
of discovery for abuse of discretion. Asociación de Periodistas de
P.R. v. Mueller, 680 F.3d 70, 77 (1st Cir. 2012). Because trial
court judges exercise broad discretion in managing the scope of
discovery, In re Recticel Foam Corp., 859 F.2d 1000, 1006 (1st Cir.
1988), "we will intervene 'only upon a clear showing [that]
. . . the lower court's discovery order was plainly wrong and
resulted in substantial prejudice to the aggrieved party,'"
Asociación de Periodistas, 680 F.3d at 77 (alterations in original)
(quoting Ayala-Gerena v. Bristol Myers-Squibb Co., 95 F.3d 86, 91
(1st Cir. 1996)).
"After reviewing the district court's evidentiary
determinations and thereby settling the scope of the summary
judgment record, we review the court's grant of summary judgment de
novo." United States ex rel. Jones v. Brigham & Women's Hosp., 678
F.3d 72, 83 (1st Cir. 2012). Taking the evidence in the light most
favorable to the non-movant and drawing all reasonable inferences
in her favor, Ayala-Gerena, 95 F.3d at 90, summary judgment is
-13-
appropriate where "there is no genuine dispute as to any material
fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law."
Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). This court may affirm summary judgment on
any basis apparent in the record. See, e.g., Colón v. Tracey, ---
F.3d ---, 2013 WL 2129439, at *4 (1st Cir. 2013); John G.
Danielson, Inc. v. Winchester-Conant Props., Inc., 322 F.3d 26, 37
(1st Cir. 2003).
III.
Although Duxbury ultimately requests that this court
reverse the district court's August 13 summary judgment order, she
does not attack that order directly. Instead, the focus of her
argument on appeal is the September 27 order limiting discovery for
Count I to (i) the time period of November 1997 to July 1998, and
(ii) the five accounts located in the state of Washington as to
which Mark Duxbury had direct and independent knowledge.
Duxbury challenges the September 27 order on two basic
grounds. First, she contends that the district court incorrectly
concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the Count
I claims outside the specified parameters based upon its misreading
of both the FCA's "original source" exception to the "public
disclosure bar" and the Supreme Court's discussion of that
exception in Rockwell, 549 U.S. 457. Second, Duxbury argues that
the September 27 order's discovery limitations "directly
contradict[] the ruling and reasoning" of this court in Duxbury I
-14-
in remanding Count I's 1992 to 1998 kickback claims to the district
court.
In response, OBP contends that the district court's
application of the "public disclosure bar" to Count I was entirely
consistent with Rockwell, emphasizing that Duxbury cites no
authority supporting her contrary reading of the Supreme Court's
decision. Moreover, OBP argues that even if the district court had
subject matter jurisdiction over the whole of Count I, this court
should affirm the September 27 order on the alternative ground that
it was well within the district court's discretion to limit the
scope of discovery to those Count I allegations pled with
sufficient particularity under Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b).
We do not reach our doubts as to the merits of Duxbury's
first challenge to the September 27 order. Assuming arguendo that
the district court had subject matter jurisdiction over all of the
Count I kickback claims, we agree with OBP's alternate ground that
the limitations the court imposed on Duxbury's discovery were
entirely consistent with our holding in Duxbury I and within the
district court's broad discretion in managing discovery.
We first dispose of Duxbury's contention that the
discovery limitations imposed by the September 27 order were
inconsistent with our application in Duxbury I of the more flexible
Rule 9(b) standard recognized in Rost, 507 F.3d at 732-33, and
adopted in the FCA precedents of this circuit, e.g., United States
-15-
ex rel. Gagne v. City of Worcester, 565 F.3d 40, 45 (1st Cir.
2009), and several others, see United States ex rel. Bledsoe v.
Cmty. Health Sys., Inc., 501 F.3d 493, 509-10 (6th Cir. 2007);
United States ex rel. Joshi v. St. Luke's Hosp., Inc., 441 F.3d
552, 557 (8th Cir. 2006). Just like the relator's objections in
the district court, this argument ignores the particulars of our
Rule 9(b) analysis in Duxbury I.
Following our opinion in Duxbury I, the only Count I
claims that remained were those "attributable to [Mark] Duxbury,
from the years 1992 through 1998." 579 F.3d at 32. Additionally,
our decision to remand those claims to the district court was tied
directly to the allegations of fraud contained in paragraph 211 of
Duxbury's amended complaint. In fact, these were the only
allegations that distinguished Duxbury's claims from the ones that
we found to be deficient under Rule 9(b) in Rost. See id. at 29-31(finding that Duxbury's amended complaint had not only "amply
describe[d] [the] illegal practices in which" OBP had allegedly
engaged, id. at 29 (quoting Rost, 507 F.3d at 732), but also
"alleged facts that false claims were in fact filed by the medical
providers he identified," id. at 31); cf. Rost, 507 F.3d at 732-33(affirming dismissal of qui tam complaint for failure to
"sufficiently establish that false claims were submitted for
government payment in a way that satisfies the [Rule 9(b)]
-16-
particularity requirement," id. at 733); United States ex rel.
Atkins v. McInteer, 470 F.3d 1350, 1357-59 (11th Cir. 2006) (same).
On remand, the district court imposed reasonable
limitations on the scope of discovery, which were entirely
consistent with our holding in Duxbury I and with the approach
endorsed by the Sixth Circuit in Bledsoe, 501 F.3d 493, on which
Duxbury improvidently relies. In Bledsoe, the Sixth Circuit
conducted a "paragraph-by-paragraph" review of the allegations of
fraud in the relator's complaint, id. at 509, finding that only
some of those allegations had been improperly dismissed by the
district court pursuant to Rule 9(b), id. at 511-15. In keeping
with the scope of discovery here, the Sixth Circuit held that the
relator was entitled to proceed with discovery for only those
claims supported by his well-pled allegations. See id. at 515,
523-24 (limiting discovery to the allegations in "paragraphs 64-67
of the [Second Amended Complaint]," and affirming dismissal of
relator's remaining allegations for failure to "survive Rule 9(b)
scrutiny," id. at 524).
The district court was not required to expand the scope
of discovery based upon the amended complaint's bald assertions
that the purported kickback scheme continued after Duxbury's
termination or that it was "nationwide" in scope. See Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678-79 (2009); Atkins, 470 F.3d at 1359(finding that relator's allegations of fraud as to "[facilities]
-17-
into which [he had] never stepped foot" were deficient under Rule
9(b)). Nor did our holding in Duxbury I obligate the district
court to do so. Rather, the district court limited discovery to
those allegations, contained in paragraph 211 of the amended
complaint, which satisfied Rule 9(b)'s particularity requirement.
That result was entirely consistent the district court's
"considerable latitude" in assessing the proper scope of discovery,
see Mack v. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co., 871 F.2d 179, 187 (1st Cir.
1989), and did not amount to an abuse of discretion, id. at 187-88;
Asociación de Periodistas, 680 F.3d at 77-78.
At the close of the initial discovery period, Duxbury
stipulated that she had not uncovered a single piece of admissible
evidence to support any of her remaining Count I claims, let alone
evidence to support her contention that OBP had orchestrated a
"multi-year nationwide scheme" of kickbacks. Thus, this was not a
case in which evidence was discovered of a nationwide scheme, which
might then have been the basis for widening discovery.
In light of this stipulation, the district court acted
within its discretion in declining to issue Duxbury license to
undertake a "fishing expedition" into the amended complaint's
purely speculative allegations of fraud through further discovery.
Universal Commc'n Sys., Inc. v. Lycos, Inc., 478 F.3d 413, 425-26
(1st Cir. 2007) (quoting McCloskey v. Mueller, 446 F.3d 262, 271
(1st Cir. 2006)); see Wayne Inv., Inc. v. Gulf Oil Corp., 739 F.2d
-18-
11, 14 (1st Cir. 1984); United States ex rel. Rost v. Pfizer, Inc.,
253 F.R.D. 11, 17 (D. Mass. 2008) (limiting relator's initial
discovery on remand to "the sales and marketing region" as to which
he had direct knowledge, and acknowledging that if relator's
kickback allegations in that region were substantiated, and shown
to be based on "national directives, the Court will expand the
scope of discovery nationwide").
In support of her demand for nationwide discovery,
Duxbury calls attention to our statement in Duxbury I that the
allegations concerning the eight medical providers in paragraph 211
lent support to "a strong inference that such claims were also
filed nationwide." 579 F.3d at 31. That did not deprive the
district court of its discretion to limit Duxbury's initial
discovery to the region in which Mark Duxbury had direct
experience. Rost, 253 F.R.D. at 17; cf. Atkins, 470 F.3d at 1359.
Moreover, any inferential support we found in Duxbury I for the
amended complaint's nationwide allegations evaporated upon
Duxbury's failure to uncover any admissible evidence to support
even her more modest regional kickback claims.7
7
At oral argument, Duxbury's counsel made an argument not
raised in its initial appellate brief attributing the need for more
discovery to Mark Duxbury's death in October 2009. While Mr.
Duxbury's death likely complicated matters, at that point this
litigation had been on going for nearly six years. That was ample
time for memorializing Mr. Duxbury's testimony in an admissible
form. Additionally, the purported hardship attributed to
Mr. Duxbury's death is belied by the amended complaint's numerous
representations that the relator was already in possession of
-19-
Having found that the discovery limitations imposed by
the September 27 order were proper, we conclude that the district
court did not err in granting OBP's motion for summary judgment on
the basis of Duxbury's stipulation that she did not possess any
evidence to support her remaining Count I claims.
IV.
The entry of summary judgment in favor of the defendant
is affirmed.
So ordered.
documents establishing the truth of Count I's kickback claims.
See, e.g., Am. Compl. ¶¶ 108, 109, 121-22.
-20-