CZ Services, Inc. v. Express Scripts Holding Company

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 CZ SERVICES, INC., et al., Case No. 3:18-cv-04217-JD

Plaintiffs,

PRETRIAL ORDER NO.

v.

EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING COMPANY, et al., 11 Defendants.

12 1. Defamation: Defendant Express Scripts (ESI) has asked whether plaintiffs CZ Services, Inc. and CareZone Pharmacy LLC (collectively CZ) are public figures for purposes of CZ’s defamation claims. Dkt. No. 461. The answer is no. Whether an entity “is a public figure is a question of law that must be assessed through a totality of the circumstances.” Manzari v. Associated Newspapers Ltd., 830 F.3d 881, 888 (9th Cir. 2016). As the Ninth Circuit has stated many times, an entity may be a public figure when it “achieve[s] such pervasive fame or notoriety that [it] becomes a public figure for all purposes and in all contexts,” called an all purpose public figure, or when it “voluntarily injects [itself] or is drawn into a particular public controversy and thereby becomes a public figure for a limited range of issues,” called…