Allen

dissenting as to McGRIGGS and concurring as to SASSEEN, with whom LEAVY, Circuit Judge, joins, concurring as to SASSEEN:

I would also affirm in McGriggs, for the same reasons we affirm in Ackel and Ar-rington. I am constrained to concur in Sasseen as it is materially indistinguishable from McGriggs. However, I disagree that either case should be resolved as the majority resolves McGriggs. In a nutshell, failure to make discovery required by a court order is not excused by the fact that the same information may be available elsewhere. See, e.g., Computer Task Group, Inc. v. Brotby, 364 F.3d 1112, 1117 (9th Cir.2004). Honoring this rule is particularly important in the context of a mul-tidistrict litigation proceeding such as MDL 1407, where hundreds of cases asserted claims based on ingestion of more than one PPA-containing product, and indiscriminately listed numerous manufacturers as defendants. CMO 13 was crafted to, and did, provide a sensible process for sorting this out. Even though some individual complaints may already have done so, many did not. The case management orders necessarily applied to all cases in which more than one product and more than one manufacturer were…

These appeals are from judgments of dismissal entered in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) proceeding for failure to comply with case management orders. The orders were entered with the agreement of all sides that they were necessary to move hundreds of cases and thousands of plaintiffs toward resolution on the merits. The district court found that many plaintiffs inexcusably failed to do what was required, and dismissed their actions. Some appeal. We must decide whether these dismissals were a clear error of judgment.

The principles that guide a court’s discretion to dismiss are well settled, but we have never addressed how they play out in the context of multidistrict litigation. We conclude that while the rules are the same as for ordinary litigation on an ordinary docket — that is, a court determining whether to dismiss an action on account of a plaintiffs noncompliance with a court order must weigh the public’s interest in expeditious resolution of litigation; the court’s need to manage its docket; the risk of prejudice to the defendants; the public policy favoring the disposition of cases on their merits; and the availability of less drastic sanctions — multidistrict…

Volume 1 of

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

In re: PHENYLPROPANOLAMINE (PPA) 

PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION,*

No. 04-35370 SHANTELL ALLEN, on behalf of Allen, Vera, et al.,*  D.C. No.

MD-01-01407-BJR*

Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BAYER CORPORATION, et al., Defendants-Appellees. 

LEON ANDERSON, JR., et al.,*  No. 04-35562 Plaintiffs-Appellants, v.  D.C. No.

MD-01-01407-BJR*

BAYER CORPORATION, et al., Defendants-Appellees. 

*A complete list of the appellants and appellees with district court case numbers is set forth in a separate, unpublished order filed contemporane- ously with this opinion. Certain appellants on that list were dismissed in this court’s orders filed on January 14, 2005, and February 21, 2006. The names of some of the dismissed appellants who were lead plaintiffs in multi-plaintiff cases have been retained on the caption for reference pur- poses only.

10293 10294 IN RE PHENYLPROPANOLAMINE

LESLIE ACKEL, et al.,*  No. 04-35588 Plaintiffs-Appellants, v.  …