Google Urges Judge to Deny Inform’s Bid to Again Amend Its Complaint

Google wants U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York to deny plaintiff Inform’s Feb. 28 motion for leave to amend its digital advertising antitrust complaint against for a second time, Google wrote the judge in a letter Wednesday (docket 1:21-md-03010). The Inform action was recently transferred to Castel with the related multidistrict litigation cases because Inform “opportunistically delayed seeking MDL treatment," it said. Despite referencing ad servers in its original 2019 complaint, Inform never sought transfer to Castel for consolidation with the other MDL cases “during the more than three years that its case was pending” in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta, said Google. Inform instead opposed Google’s motion to dismiss and amended its complaint once in that court, it said. “Google’s most recently filed motion to dismiss Inform’s amended complaint remains pending, and Inform’s request to amend seeks to moot that motion.” It appears that Inform views transfer to the MDL “as an opportunity to start over with a third complaint,” it said. Inform’s two complaints “had little to do with ad tech other than a few stray paragraphs containing allegations wholly unconnected to Inform and its supposed harm,” said Google. Inform’s motion for leave is a request “for a second do-over to give Inform a chance to copy-and-paste more irrelevant allegations into its already rambling complaint,” it said. Castel “should reject it and allow Google’s pending motion to dismiss to proceed,” it said.