United States Ninth Circuit

In an action challenging Washington's rules that require pharmacies to maintain a representative assortment of drugs for which there is patient demand and to dispense prescription drugs and drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for "restricted distribution," unless one of several enumerated exceptions applies, where plaintiffs served a subpoena on a non-party who had reported incidences of pharmacists refusing to dispense emergency contraception, to which the non-party objected, the district court's orders related to the discovery dispute are: 1) affirmed as to the denial of sanctions, where, because there was some ambiguity in the meaning of the district court's two orders, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that plaintiffs did not necessarily act in bad faith in interpreting the orders in the way they did; but 2) reversed as to the denial of costs, where the $20,000 expended by the non-party in complying with the subpoena was "significant," and therefore the matter is remanded for a proper allocation of costs.

Appellate Information

• Decided 12/31/2013
• Published 12/31/2013

Judges

• TASHIMA

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel