Taylor v. The Sackler Family of Purdue Ownership

• Decision Date: 28 December 2021
• Docket Number: 3:21-cv-3175-E-BN
• Parties: TAD TAYLOR, BOP Register No. 26966-078, Plaintiff, v. THE SACKLER FAMILY OF PURDUE OWNERSHIP, ET AL., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

TAD TAYLOR, BOP Register No. 26966-078, Plaintiff, v. THE SACKLER FAMILY OF PURDUE OWNERSHIP, ET AL., Defendants.

No. 3:21-cv-3175-E-BN

United States District Court, N.D. Texas, Dallas Division

December 28, 2021

FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

DAVID L. HORAN UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

[Plaintiff] Theodore “Tad” Taylor and Chia Jean Lee, a married couple who met while earning their degrees at Yale, ran Taylor Texas Medicine in Richardson, Texas. Taylor was the clinic's only doctor while Lee, a nurse by training, was the clinic's office manager. An Eastern District of Texas grand jury indicted the couple for conspiring to distribute controlled substances. The indictment alleged that from 2010 through early 2012, Taylor and Lee conspired to illegally prescribe five controlled substances: oxycodone, amphetamine salts, hydrocodone alprazolam, and promethazine with codeine.

A jury convicted both of them after a seven-day trial. It also made findings about the quantity of drugs the couple distributed, but those quantities did not trigger higher statutory minimum or maximum sentences. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). The district court then sentenced Taylor to the 20-year statutory maximum (his Guidelines range would have been higher but for the statutory cap) and Lee to just over 15 years (the bottom of her Guidelines range).

United States v. Lee, 966 F.3d 310, 316 (5th Cir. 2020). Taylor's projected release date is October 24 2035. See United States v. Taylor, No. 4:17-CR-9(1) 2020 WL 5222797 (E.D. Tex. Sept. 1, 2020).

Taylor incarcerated in this district, now brings a pro se civil lawsuit against the Sackler Family, the founders of Purdue Pharma, alleging, in essence, that they are liable for his current predicament due to “deficiencies, misrepresentations, misleading promotional materials, aggressive sales and marketing tactics, and deceptive trade practices, all designed to fraudulently promote the safety, efficacy, and convenience of opioid prescribing in an effort to stimulate physician prescription conveyance thus resulting in a compromised environment within the physician's practice leading to violations of compliance, legal standing, and of course, patient safety.” Dkt. No. 3 at 1.

Taylor further specifies that his damages include his criminal conviction: “Damages to this Plaintiff as a previously practicing pain medicine physician, shall include, but shall not be limited to, damaged reputation, foregone license, lost income, missed opportunity, seized investments and assets, loss of freedom, stress and anxiety.” Id.

Taylor neither paid the $402 filing fee nor moved for leave to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP). United States District Judge Ada Brown referred his complaint to the undersigned United States magistrate judge for pretrial management under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b) and a standing order of reference. And the undersigned enters these findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommendation that the Court should dismiss Taylor's claims without prejudice.

Legal Standards and Analysis

Taylor qualifies as a prisoner under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(c). But he does not seek “redress from a governmental entity or officer or employee of a governmental entity.” Id. § 1915A(a). So the Court cannot screen his complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.

Regardless, a district court is required to screen a civil action filed IFP and may summarily dismiss that action, or any portion of the action, if, for example, it fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii). “The language of § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) tracks the language of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).” Black v. Warren, 134 F.3d 732, 733-34 (5th Cir. 1998) (per curiam).

And, even outside the IFP context, “[i]t is well-established that a district court may dismiss a complaint on its own motion under [Rule] 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may granted.” Starrett v. U.S. Dep't of Defense, No. 3:18-cv-2851-M-BH, 2018 WL 6069969, at *1 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 30, 2018) (citing Carroll v. Fort James Corp., 470 F.3d 1171 (5th Cir. 2006) (citing, in turn, Shawnee Int'l, N.V. v. Hondo Drilling Co., 742 F.2d 234, 236 (5th Cir. 1984))), rec. accepted, 2018 WL 6068991 (N.D. Tex. Nov. 20, 2018), aff'd, 763 Fed.Appx. 383 (5th Cir.) (per curiam), cert. denied, 140 S.Ct. 142 (2019).

A district court may exercise its “inherent authority ... to dismiss a complaint on its own motion ... ‘as long as the procedure employed is fair.'” Gaffney v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 294 Fed.Appx. 975, 977 (5th Cir. 2008) (per curiam) (quoting Carroll, 470 F.3d at 1177 (quoting, in turn, Bazrowx v. Scott, 136 F.3d 1053, 1054 (5th Cir. 1998)); citation omitted). And the United States Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit has “suggested that fairness in this context requires both notice of the court's intention to dismiss sua sponte and an opportunity to respond.” Id. (cleaned up; quoting Lozano v. Ocwen Fed. Bank, FSB, 489 F.3d 636, 643 (5th Cir. 2007) (quoting, in turn, Carroll, 470 F.3d at 1177)); accord Carver v. Atwood, 18 F.4th 494, 498 (5th Cir. 2021) (“The broad rule is that ‘a district court may dismiss a claim on its own motion as long as the procedure employed is fair.' More specifically, ‘fairness in this context requires both notice of the court's intention and an opportunity to respond' before dismissing sua sponte with prejudice.” (citations omitted)).

Notice is provided through these findings, conclusions, and recommendations (the FCR), and the period to file objections to the FCR (further explained below) affords an opportunity to respond. See, e.g., Starrett, 2018 WL 6069969, at *2 (citations omitted).

Before examining Taylor's claims, however, the Court must examine its own subject matter jurisdiction, to ensure that it is operating “within the bounds the Constitution and Congress have prescribed.” Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 583 (1999)). “Under the dictates of Article III of the United States Constitution, federal courts are confined to adjudicating actual ‘cases' and ‘controversies.'” Henderson v. Stalder, 287 F.3d 374, 378 (5th Cir. 2002) (quoting U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2, cl. 1). “There is no case or controversy without standing to sue.” Williams v. Parker, 843 F.3d 617, 620 (5th Cir. 2016) (citing Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818 (1997)). So Article III “[s]tanding is a threshold issue that [a federal court must] consider before examining the merits.” Id. (citing Cibolo Waste, Inc. v. City of San Antonio, 718 F.3d 469, 473 (5th Cir. 2013)).^[1] To obtain “Article III standing, a plaintiff must allege that it has been injured, that the defendant caused the injury, and that the requested relief will redress the injury.” Cotton v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's of London, 831 F.3d 592, 595 (5th Cir. 2016) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)). “‘That triad of injury in fact, causation, and redressability constitutes the core of Article III's case-or-controversy requirement, ” and [Taylor], as ‘the party invoking federal jurisdiction, bears the burden of establishing its existence.'” Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. v. Dep't of Treasury, 946 F.3d 649, 655 (5th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up; quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env't, 523 U.S. 83, 103-04 (1998)).

Plausible allegations will carry Taylor's burden at this time, as “each element of Article III standing must be supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof, with the same evidentiary requirements of that stage of litigation.” Legacy Cmty. Health Servs., Inc. v. Smith, 881 F.3d 358, 366 (5th Cir. 2018) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

Taylor has alleged an injury. And his request for monetary damages plausibly alleges redressability, since even nominal damages are enough for this prong. See Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 141 S.Ct. 792, 801-02 (2021).

As to causation, however,

[e]ven though Article III requires a causal connection between the plaintiff's injury and the defendant's challenged conduct, it doesn't require a showing of proximate cause or that “the defendant's actions are the very last step in the chain of causation.” Causation, for example, isn't precluded where the defendant's actions produce a “determinative or coercive effect upon the action of someone else, ” resulting in injury. But [Taylor's] injuries can't be “the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court.”

Inclusive Communities Project, 946 F.3d at 655 (quoting Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 169, 167 (1997)).

“Nor can [Taylor's injuries] be ‘self-inflicted.'” Id. (quoting Ass'n of Cmty. Orgs. for Reform Now v. Fowler, 178 F.3d 350, 358 (5th Cir. 1999)).

“An injury is self-inflicted so as to defeat the causation necessary to establish standing, however, ‘only if the injury is so completely due to the plaintiff's own fault as to break the causal chain.'” NRDC, Inc. v. U.S. Food & Drug Admin., 710 F.3d 71, 85 (2d Cir. 2013) (quoting St. Pierre v. Dyer, 208 F.3d 394, 403 (2d Cir. 2000)); accord Petro-Chem Processing, Inc. v. E.P.A., 866 F.2d 433, 438 (D.C. Cir. 1989). “[Consequently, a ‘self-inflicted harm' - i.e., an ‘injury ... largely of [the plaintiff's] own making' - is neither ‘an “injury” cognizable under Article III' nor an injury that is ‘fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged conduct.'” Maryland v. U.S. Dep't of Educ., 474 F.Supp.3d 13, 35 (D.D.C. 2020) (quoting Nat'l Family Planning & Reprod. Health Ass'n, v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 826, 831 (D.C. Cir. 2006)), vacated as moot, 2020 WL 7868112 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 22, 2020); see also 2020 WL 7773390 (D.D.C. ...