## Facts

- Twenty-six related actions asserting federal and state antitrust claims against General Motors and other automotive-industry companies were transferred to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine for coordinated pretrial proceedings.
- The multidistrict litigation involved 57 plaintiffs, 23 defendants, and 68 attorneys, with several dozen related state-court actions also pending.
- Working with the parties, the court developed and entered a detailed scheduling order designed to manage the litigation efficiently and to focus early proceedings on resolving the federal plaintiffs’ motion for class certification.
- The scheduling order set discovery and deadlines leading to a class-certification hearing and did not provide for summary-judgment motion practice before that hearing.
- After entry of the scheduling order, but about six months before the scheduled class-certification hearing, General Motors filed a motion for summary judgment.
- The summary-judgment motion was not part of the scheduling order, and General Motors had not alerted the court or other parties that it planned to file such a motion at that stage.
- General Motors’ filing triggered other defendants to state that they would also seek to file summary-judgment motions if the court proceeded with GM’s motion.
- Plaintiffs moved to stay any action on General Motors’ summary-judgment motion, including staying their obligation to respond, so that the case would proceed on the schedule already set.

## Issues

1. In a complex MDL governed by a detailed scheduling order focused on class certification, should the court stay consideration of General Motors’ early summary-judgment motion that was filed outside the schedule?

## Decision

- The court granted plaintiffs’ motion to stay action on General Motors’ motion for summary judgment.
- The court declined to consider General Motors’ summary-judgment motion at that time and did not reach the merits.
- The court indicated that allowing an out-of-sequence summary-judgment motion would disrupt the planned progression toward the class-certification hearing and likely lead to additional unscheduled dispositive motions by other defendants.

## Legal Principles

- Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16 gives a district court broad discretion to set and enforce a scheduling order aimed at the just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution of the litigation.
- A party has no automatic right to have a summary-judgment motion heard on a timetable that conflicts with the court’s scheduling order; the court may control the timing of Rule 56 motion practice.
- In MDL proceedings with many parties and parallel actions, the court may postpone dispositive motions when early merits briefing would consume resources and interfere with a case-management plan that prioritizes class-certification issues.
- Staying an unexpectedly filed dispositive motion may be appropriate when the motion would cause delay, trigger follow-on motions, and impose costs that the scheduling process did not account for, while leaving the movant free to raise the arguments later on an appropriate schedule.

## Conclusion

In this MDL, the District of Maine exercised its Rule 16 case-management authority to stay consideration of General Motors’ premature summary-judgment motion, keeping the parties on the court-ordered track toward class certification and deferring merits-based dispositive motion practice until a later, court-approved stage.


In re New Motor Vehicles Canadian Export Antitrust Litigation, 229 F.R.D. 35 (2005)