CAVANAGH v. IDEXX LABORATORIES INC

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF MAINE

JAMIE LEAVITT, )

f/k/a JAMIE CAVANAGH, )

)

Plaintiff )

)

v. ) No. 2:23-cv-00273-NT

)

IDEXX LABORATORIES, INC., )

)

Defendant )

ORDER ON MOTION TO AMEND COMPLAINT

Jamie Leavitt, the Plaintiff in this sex-based discrimination and retaliation

case, seeks leave to amend her complaint to allege a class action nearly sixteen

months after filing suit. See Motion to Amend Complaint (ECF No. 33) at 1-6;

Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). The Defendant IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. opposes the

proposed amendments. See Opposition (ECF No. 39) at 1-12. For the following

reasons, Leavitt’s motion to amend her complaint is denied.1

I. Background

This matter arises from Leavitt’s employment at IDEXX from May 2011 to May

2021. See First Amended Complaint (ECF No. 10) ¶¶ 10, 68. She was originally hired

as a recruiter (a grade level 500 position) and was then promoted to the following

roles: (1) junior human resources business partner (HRBP) (grade level 500) in

January 2013; HRBP (grade level 600) in May 2015; senior HRBP I (grade level 700)

1 Leavitt also seeks leave to amend the case caption to reflect her name change from Jamie Cavanagh

to Jamie Leavitt. See Motion to Amend Complaint at 1. In lieu of requiring any amended filings,

I will apply the change to this order and ask that the Clerk’s Office update her case to mirror the same.

in March 2016; and senior HRBP II (grade level 800) in April 2018. See id. ¶¶ 10-13.

In the fall of 2017, Leavitt began reporting to Zach Nelson. See id. ¶ 18. After

a colleague began interacting with her in a way that she perceived as “flirtatious” and

professionally “distracting,” Leavitt sought to distance herself from the situation by

asking Nelson to transfer her to a different client group. See id. ¶¶ 21-25. Instead of

taking appropriate action, Nelson gossiped about Leavitt’s request to other IDEXX

employees with whom he had no professional reason to discuss it. See id. ¶¶ 28-29.

When Leavitt complained about Nelson’s conduct to employee relations, his

behavior worsened. See id. ¶¶ 34-35. Nelson gave Leavitt a negative performance

review in which he said she was “too emotional,” disparaged her to leadership,

“layered” her under management by other human resource professionals so she had

less visibility and fewer advancement opportunities, and cabined her in a role she did

not want in the hope that she would resign. See id. ¶¶ 30, 36, 39-41, 48-50, 54-56.

Leavitt maintains that Nelson’s behavior created a hostile, abusive, and

retaliatory work environment at IDEXX in which she was evaluated differently from

her peers for the same promotions, denied advancement and merit-based salary

increases, and eventually constructively discharged. See id. ¶¶ 44-47, 51-53, 65, 68.

Leavitt filed discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission (EEOC) and the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and

received notice of right to sue letters on April 15, 2023, and October 10, 2023,

respectively. See id. ¶¶ 6-7. She filed a complaint in this Court (ECF No. 1) on

July 13, 2023, and an amended complaint on November 28, 2023, alleging IDEXX

engaged in sex-based discrimination and retaliation against her in violation of

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17, as well

as the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), see 5 M.R.S.A. §§ 4571-4577

(Westlaw, July 7, 2025), and engaged in disability discrimination against her in

violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), see 42 U.S.C. §§ 12111-12117;

First Amended Complaint ¶¶ 70-95.2

IDEXX was granted two extensions of time to file an answer (ECF Nos. 6-9),

and on December 12, 2023, filed a motion to dismiss Leavitt’s entire first amended

complaint for failure to state a claim (ECF No. 11). On May 28, 2024, the Court

granted the motion to dismiss only as to Leavitt’s ADA claim (ECF No. 16), prompting

IDEXX to file a motion for partial reconsideration (ECF No. 20), which the Court

denied (ECF No. 26) on August 7, 2024. Leavitt was granted extensions of time to

file oppositions to both the motion to dismiss and the motion for partial

reconsideration (ECF Nos. 12-13, 22-23). IDEXX then filed its answer to Leavitt’s

first amended complaint on August 19, 2024 (ECF No. 27).

On October 28 and November 5, 2024, Leavitt filed motions to stay proceedings

or amend the scheduling order (ECF Nos. 30-31) in anticipation of the instant motion

for leave to file a second amended complaint, which she ultimately filed on

November 7, 2024. In response, I retroactively amended the deadline to join parties

2 The only amendments Leavitt made to her original complaint were to state that she had received

a right to sue letter from the MHRC and fix a typographical error.

and alter or amend pleadings to November 7, 2024,3 and ordered remaining discovery

deadlines stayed pending resolution of this motion (ECF No. 35).

In her proposed second amended class action complaint, Leavitt asserts a class

action against IDEXX alleging the company engaged in a pattern of sex-based

discrimination and retaliation against its female employees in violation of Title VII

and the MHRA. See Proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint

(ECF No. 33-1) ¶¶ 240-277. Leavitt names herself, Jessica Mayhew, and Molly

Hoisser as class representatives bringing claims against IDEXX on behalf of a

putative class “of all female citizens of the United States who are, or have been,

employed by IDEXX in the United States and have experienced gender discrimination

or retaliation at any time during the applicable liability period.”4 Id. ¶ 215. Leavitt

states “there are hundreds, if not thousands, of members of the proposed class.” Id.

Like Leavitt, Mayhew and Hoisser allege they experienced sex-based discrimination

and retaliation while employed by IDEXX, and they have each exhausted their

administrative remedies at the EEOC and the MHRC. See id. ¶¶ 9-10, 69-171.

II. Legal Standard

A party that seeks to amend a complaint more than twenty-one days after the

3 The scheduling order (ECF No. 28) originally listed November 5, 2024, as the deadline to join parties

and alter or amend pleadings. Because I retroactively amended that deadline to November 7, 2024,

and Leavitt filed the instant motion on that date, my analysis is governed by Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2)’s

“freely give[n]” standard instead of Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b)’s more demanding “good cause” standard,

which applies to “motions to amend filed after scheduling order deadlines have passed.”

Somascan, Inc. v. Philips Med. Sys. Nederland, B.V., 714 F.3d 62, 64 (1st Cir. 2013) (cleaned up).

4 The proposed second amended class action complaint also includes factual allegations pertaining to

Jessica Schnell, an individual who filed a sex-based employment discrimination complaint against

IDEXX with the MHRC in November 2024. See Motion to Amend Complaint at 2; Proposed Second

Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶ 172-193; Schnell MHRC Complaint (ECF No. 39-1) at 1-4.

filing of a responsive pleading may do so “only with the opposing party’s written

consent or the court’s leave.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). Such leave should be “freely

give[n] when justice so requires.” Id. Yet courts need not “mindlessly grant every

request for leave to amend,” Aponte-Torres v. Univ. of P.R., 445 F.3d 50, 58

(1st Cir. 2006), and may deny leave for reasons such as “undue delay, bad faith or

dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by

amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of

allowance of the amendment, [or] futility,” Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962).

III. Discussion

In this case, IDEXX opposes Leavitt’s motion to amend on the bases of undue

delay, dilatory motive, undue prejudice, and futility. See Opposition at 3.

A. Undue Delay and Undue Prejudice

A period of delay is “undue” if it is both “substantial and unjustified.”

See Amyndas Pharms., S.A. v. Zealand Pharma A/S, 48 F.4th 18, 37 (1st Cir. 2022).

As such, “when considerable time has elapsed between the filing of the complaint and

the motion to amend, the movant has the burden of showing some valid reason for

[their] neglect and delay.” Invest Almaz v. Temple-Inland Forest Prods. Corp.,

243 F.3d 57, 71 (1st Cir. 2001) (cleaned up). The First Circuit has considered delays

of fourteen, fifteen, and seventeen months substantial enough to require explanation.

See In re Lombardo, 755 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 2014) (collecting cases).

In assessing such a delay, courts take into account “what the movant knew or should

have known and what [they] did or should have done.” Id. at 3-4 (cleaned up).

Additionally, because delay inevitably accompanies a Rule 15(a)(2) motion,

“the necessary quantum of prejudice must implicate more than the inconveniences

and delays that are inherent in the granting of any such motion in order to justify its

denial.” U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n v. James, 680 F. Supp. 2d 259, 261-62 (D. Me. 2010).

Thus, undue prejudice “[m]ost often . . . takes the form of additional, prolonged

discovery and a postponement of trial.” Klunder v. Brown Univ., 778 F.3d 24, 34

(1st Cir. 2015); see, e.g., Acosta-Mestre v. Hilton Int’l of P.R., Inc., 156 F.3d 49, 52

(1st Cir. 1998) (affirming denial of a motion to amend that would have prejudiced

Hilton by resulting in “a re-opening of discovery with additional costs, a significant

postponement of trial, and a likely major alteration in trial strategy and tactics”).

IDEXX argues that Leavitt’s motion to amend should be denied on the basis of

undue delay because Leavitt and Mayhew filed suit in this Court in July 2023,

Hoisser filed suit in state court in August 2024, and the same attorney represents all

three individuals, meaning Leavitt knew a class action was possible as early as

July 2023, and certainly by August 2024. See Opposition at 3-4. A change in

litigation strategy, IDEXX contends, cannot justify such a long delay. See id. at 4.

IDEXX further asserts it would be unduly prejudiced if the proposed amendments

were permitted because waiting for “hundreds, if not thousands” of potential class

members to exhaust their administrative remedies before joining the action would

surely generate an indeterminate but substantial delay, and the company has already

engaged in significant litigation against these plaintiffs individually and is entitled

to resolution of the dispositive motions filed in those actions. See id. at 4-5.

In response, Leavitt’s counsel maintains that while Leavitt’s and Mayhew’s

overlapping cases may have supported a request for consolidation, she did not feel

that a class action “materialized” until Hoisser and Schnell retained her in

August 2024 to allege similar claims, and all four individuals named other similarly

situated current or former IDEXX employees. Reply (ECF No. 42) at 4-5. She offers

no explanation for the three month filing delay between August and November 2024.

Leavitt also insists the proposed amendments would benefit all parties because a

class action would economize discovery that would otherwise proceed individually in

each plaintiff’s lawsuit. See id. at 5; Motion to Amend Complaint at 3-4.

She correspondingly requests, see Motion to Amend Complaint at 2, that I stay

Mayhew’s case against IDEXX in this Court, see No. 2:23-cv-00285-SDN, as well as

Hoisser’s case against IDEXX in the Maine Superior Court, see No. CV-24-308.

Considering these circumstances, I conclude that the information available to

Leavitt’s counsel did not change significantly enough between July 2023 and

August 2024 to justify the nearly sixteen month delay between filing a complaint and

seeking leave to so drastically amend it.5 See Calderón-Serra v. Wilmington Trust

Co., 715 F.3d 14, 20 (1st Cir. 2013) (“Appreciable delay alone, in the absence of good

reason for it, is enough to justify denying a motion for leave to amend.”).

At both points in time, Leavitt’s counsel represented more than one litigant

5 I do not, however, accept IDEXX’s position that I should infer dilatory motive from these

circumstances. See Opposition at 3-4. It is not evident that Leavitt’s reasons for the undue delay are

disingenuous or that the delay itself was purely tactical. See Motion to Amend Complaint at 4-5

(explaining that new information came to light supporting a class action and judicial economy would

be served by jointly litigating these claims). Cf. Febus-Cruz v. Sauri-Santiago, 652 F. Supp. 2d 166,

169 (D.P.R. 2009) (finding dilatory motive where the plaintiffs filed their motion to amend three weeks

before trial and attempted to mislead the court about when they obtained the requisite information).

asserting that IDEXX engaged in sex-based discrimination and retaliation against

them in violation of Title VII and the MHRA, and that they knew of similar violations

against other female employees. Compare First Amended Complaint ¶¶ 2, 15, 27, 32

and Mayhew Complaint, No. 2:23-cv-00285-SDN (ECF No. 1) ¶¶ 2, 30, 42, 54,

with Proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint. I am also unpersuaded that

a class action became viable only in August 2024 when Leavitt’s counsel represented

Leavitt, Mayhew, Hoisser, and Schnell, who could each “name many more” similarly

situated current or former IDEXX employees. See Reply at 4-5. While Hoisser

identifies two such individuals in the proposed second amended class action

complaint, neither Schnell nor Leavitt identify anyone, and Mayhew points to one

individual but there is no indication that Leavitt’s counsel could not have gathered

the information from her as early as July 2023 with due diligence.6

See Proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶ 119, 152-162.

I also conclude that IDEXX would be unduly prejudiced by the proposed

amendments. To begin with, no authority supports my ability to stay a case pending

on a different docket in this Court, much less in a state court. See Younger v. Harris,

401 U.S. 37, 41 (1971) (emphasizing that federal courts may not “stay or enjoin

pending state court proceedings except under special circumstances”);

Bar Harbor Bank & Trust v. Hanover Ins. Grp., Inc., No. 1:21-cv-00201-LEW,

6 Leavitt’s counsel also identifies two employees in California—B.A. and S.O.—who IDEXX allegedly

discriminated and retaliated against for speaking out about the company’s sex discrimination as well

as a glitch in one of its products. See Proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶ 195-199.

Litigation pertaining to the product issue commenced in state court in January 2024 and was removed

to federal court in February 2024, however, suggesting Leavitt’s counsel could have with proper due

diligence identified the employees involved much earlier. See Notice of Removal (ECF No. 1), The

Labelle Found., Inc. v. IDEXX Laboratories, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01131-FLA-SK (C.D. Cal. Feb. 9, 2024).

2022 WL 2410256, at *1 (D. Me. Jan. 12, 2022) (“The district court ‘has broad

discretion to stay proceedings as an incident to its power to control its own docket.’”

(emphasis added)) (quoting Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 706 (1997)).

Moreover, Leavitt’s suggestion that allowing this case to proceed as a class

action would lessen IDEXX’s overall discovery burden does not pass the straight face

test. The proposed amendments would impose a significant burden on IDEXX to

investigate and produce discovery for “hundreds, if not thousands” of putative class

members, postpone any potential trial, and require IDEXX to reimagine its original

litigation strategy. While these types of delay might be expected to attend any motion

to amend a complaint to assert a class action, Leavitt’s request to so greatly alter the

case now must be denied as unduly prejudicial because it effectively negates sixteen

months of litigation. See Avery v. Wellpath, LLC, No. 2:20-cv-00428-NT,

2022 WL 2316711, at *2-3 (D. Me. June 28, 2022) (concluding that granting a motion

to amend which sought to add new claims and over a dozen new defendants would

unduly prejudice the defendants because it was filed over seventeen months after the

case was initiated and would “essentially restart [the] matter from square one, which

would, in turn, erase any progress that the parties [had] made over the past year and

a half and further delay resolution of [the] matter”); Villanueva v. United States,

662 F.3d 124, 127 (1st Cir. 2011) (affirming denial of a plaintiff’s motion to amend

where the amendments would have been “tantamount to restarting the proceedings,

complete with new defendants . . . and an entirely new cause of action” and the

plaintiff “had waited too long to alter the nature of the proceedings so drastically”);

see also Steir v. Girl Scouts of the USA, 383 F.3d 7, 12 (1st Cir. 2004) (“Regardless of

the context, the longer a plaintiff delays, the more likely the motion to amend will be

denied, as protracted delay, with its attendant burdens on the opponent and the

court, is itself a sufficient reason for the court to withhold permission to amend.”).

B. Futility

“The class action is an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted

by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v.

Dukes, 564 U.S. 338, 348 (2011) (cleaned up). To justify departing from that rule,

“class representative[s] must be part of the class and possess the same interest and

suffer the same injury as the class members.” Id. at 348-49 (cleaned up). Rule 23(a)

of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ensures the named plaintiffs are appropriate

class representatives by imposing four requirements—numerosity, commonality,

typicality, and adequate representation—that “effectively limit the class claims to

those fairly encompassed by the named plaintiff’s claims.” Id. at 349 (cleaned up).

IDEXX argues that Leavitt’s proposed second amended class action complaint

is futile because the allegations therein fall short of Rule 23(a)’s threshold class action

requirements—specifically, commonality and typicality—as well as Rule 23(b)(3)’s

predominance requirement. See Opposition at 5-7, 9-10. “‘Futility’ means that the

complaint, as amended, would fail to state a claim upon which relief could be

granted.” Glassman v. Computervision Corp., 90 F.3d 617, 623 (1st Cir. 1996).

Commonality requires “a plaintiff to show that ‘there are questions of law or

fact common to the class.’” Wal-Mart, 564 U.S. at 349 (quoting

Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2)). But “[t]his does not mean merely that [the class members]

have all suffered a violation of the same provision of law.” Id. at 350. For example,

Title VII . . . can be violated in many ways—by intentional

discrimination, or by hiring and promotion criteria that result in

disparate impact, and by the use of these practices on the part of many

different superiors in a single company. Quite obviously, the mere claim

by employees of the same company that they have suffered a Title VII

injury, or even a disparate-impact Title VII injury, gives no cause to

believe that all their claims can productively be litigated at once. Their

claims must depend upon a common contention—for example, the

assertion of discriminatory bias on the part of the same supervisor. That

common contention, moreover, must be of such a nature that it is

capable of classwide resolution—which means that determination of its

truth or falsity will resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each

one of the claims in one stroke.

Id. The commonality requirement can be especially difficult to satisfy where class

members allege that an employer engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination

“because, in resolving an individual’s Title VII claim, the crux of the inquiry is the

reason for a particular employment decision.” Id. at 352 (cleaned up).

Typicality, on the other hand, requires “the claims or defenses of the

representative parties [to be] typical of the claims or defenses of the class.”

Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(3). Class representatives’ claims are therefore “typical” when

they “arise from the same event or practice or course of conduct that gives rise to the

claims of other class members, and . . . are based on the same legal theory.”

García–Rubiera v. Calderón, 570 F.3d 443, 460 (1st Cir. 2009) (cleaned up).

The Supreme Court has stated that Rule 23(a)’s commonality and typically

requirements “tend to merge” because “[b]oth serve as guideposts for determining

whether under the particular circumstances maintenance of a class action is

economical and whether the named plaintiff's claim and the class claims are so

interrelated that the interests of the class members will be fairly and adequately

protected in their absence.” Wal-Mart, 564 U.S. at 349 n.5 (quoting

Gen. Tel. Co. of Sw. v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 157 n. 13 (1982)).

Finally, predominance requires a finding by the Court “that the questions of

law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only

individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for

fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3)).

IDEXX contends the claims in the proposed second amended class action

complaint fail commonality and typicality under Rule 23(a) because they are based

on varying legal theories and arose from distinct circumstances involving highly

individualized employment decisions instead of “a specific, single [discriminatory]

practice . . ., [much less] one helmed by a single decision-maker.” Opposition at 6-7.

These same circumstances also solidify the proposed amendments’ futility under

Rule 23(b)(3), IDEXX argues, because the proposed class representatives’ claims are

so rooted in subjective decision-making that individual-specific fact inquiries would

“undoubtedly predominate” over any common issues. Id. at 9-10.

Leavitt disputes IDEXX’s position, stating that it ignores the allegations that

the proposed class representatives were “identically” affected by its cultural mandate,

or “pattern and practice,” of discriminating against women “any time they asserted

their rights.” Reply at 8-9. She also maintains that IDEXX’s futility arguments are

factual in nature and should therefore be disregarded as speculative and premature

in the absence of pre-certification discovery “[b]ecause the analysis of whether a class

will ultimately be certified is far more complicated and beyond the scope of a simple

Rule 15 motion for leave to amend.” Id. at 7-10.

While the First Circuit instructs that review of the complaint, absent “some

development of the facts,” is not “normally” adequate for “determining whether a

class eventually can be certified” under Rule 23, College of Dental Surgeons of P.R. v.

Conn. Gen. Life Ins. Co., 585 F.3d 33, 41-42 (1st Cir. 2009), it clearly acknowledges

“there may be rare situations in which it is obvious from the complaint alone that

there cannot be a class that would warrant certification,” id. at 41 n.3;

see also Manning v. Boston Med. Ctr. Corp., 725 F.3d 34, 59 (1st Cir. 2013) (noting

“[t]he Supreme Court has recognized that ‘[s]ometimes the issues are plain enough

from the pleadings to determine whether the interest of the absent parties are fairly

encompassed within the named plaintiff’s claim.’”) (quoting Falcon, 457 U.S. at 160).

This is one such situation. Leavitt has not explained, nor can I ascertain, what

type of discovery or factual development would render this proposed class action

capable of Rule 23 certification. For the reasons described below, the individualized

nature of the allegations in the proposed second amended class action complaint

make the claims therein unsuitable for classwide resolution.

First, the proposed class representatives cannot trace their injury to a truly

common contention (for example, an allegation of discriminatory bias by a particular

IDEXX supervisor). See Wal-Mart, 564 U.S. at 350. This proposed class action does

not hinge on a purportedly discriminatory corporate policy at IDEXX, but rather the

individual, allegedly discriminatory employment decisions made by its various

supervisors: Leavitt’s allegations pertain to Zack Nelson, Gio Twigge, Jennifer

Stickney, and Katie Wellman, Mayhew’s allegations reference a manager named Bev

and other unnamed individuals in management and human resources, and Hoisser’s

allegations involve Nelson, Twigge, and Sarah Hare. See Proposed Second Amended

Class Action Complaint ¶¶ 15-171. The Supreme Court has indicated that while an

employer’s decision to permit its supervisors discretion over employment decisions

can support Title VII liability, it “does not lead to the conclusion that every employee

in a company using a system of discretion has such a claim in common.”

Wal-Mart, 564 U.S. at 355. The very nature of such discretion means that

establishing the illegality of one supervisor’s employment decision will not establish

the illegality of another’s; thus, “[a] party seeking to certify a nationwide class

[against such a company] will be unable to show that all the employees’ Title VII

claims will in fact depend on the answers to common questions.” Id. at 355-56.

Second, even if the proposed class representatives shared a common

contention, it would not predominate because determining the reasons underlying

the various employment decisions and how they affected each class member would

require “a great deal of individualized proof.” Belezos v. Bd. of Selectmen of Hingham,

Ma., No. 17-12570-MBB, 2019 WL 6358247, at *12 (D. Mass. Nov. 27, 2019)

(concluding that common questions did not predominate where putative class

members were cited for speeding violations “on 25 separate roadways, at numerous

speed limit signs, for traveling various speeds” and determining the defendants’

liability to each class member would require delving into “myriad . . . individualized

legal and factual issues” pertaining to the legality of the defendants’ erection of each

sign as well as “the enforcement of each sign regarding each putative class member”);

see also Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 623-24 (1997) (stating that

“the predominance criterion is far more demanding” than Rule 23(a)’s commonality).

Lastly, while the proposed class representatives’ claims emanate generally

from IDEXX’s alleged pattern of sex-based discrimination and retaliation, the

“essential characteristics” of those claims arise from the legality of each individual

employment decision. Belezos, 2019 WL 6358247, at *10. For example, Leavitt’s

interest centers on presenting the illegality of Nelson’s, Twigge’s, Stickney’s, and

Wellman’s conduct to show they engaged in sex-based discrimination and retaliation,

and created a hostile working environment, in violation of Title VII and the MHRA.

See Proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint ¶¶ 15-58. Even assuming

Leavitt’s claims typify the claims of other putative class members who received the

same treatment from those supervisors, however, they are not typical of claims by

putative class members who were purportedly subjected to similar behavior by other

IDEXX supervisors, who may even be located in other states, each of which would

require a separate inquiry into the legality of that particular supervisor’s conduct.

See Belezos, 2019 WL 6358247, at *10; Proposed Second Amended Class Action

Complaint ¶ 215 (“The class consists of all female citizens of the United States who

are, or have been, employed by IDEXX in the United States and have experienced

discrimination or retaliation at any time during the applicable liability period.”).

Accordingly, typicality is lacking. See García–Rubiera, 570 F.3d at 460.

Because I conclude that the proposed second amended class action complaint

fails to satisfy Rule 23’s commonality, typicality, and predominance requirements,

I need not reach IDEXX’s other arguments in support of futility.

IV. Conclusion

For the aforementioned reasons, the Plaintiff Jamie Leavitt’s motion for leave

to amend her complaint to assert a class action is DENIED.

NOTICE

In accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a), a party may

serve and file an objection to this order within fourteen (14) days after being

served with a copy thereof.

Failure to file a timely objection shall constitute a waiver of the right

to review by the District Court and to any further appeal of this order.

Dated: July 7, 2025

/s/ Karen Frink Wolf

United States Magistrate Judge