*702Plaintiffs in this multi-district litigation appeal from judgments entered by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Denise L. Cote, J. ) dismissing their products liability claims for injuries allegedly caused by the drug Eliquis (apixaban). Specifically, Plaintiffs assert that the district court (1) incorrectly denied motions to remand forty-four of the sixty-four cases before it, and (2) wrongly concluded that Plaintiffs' state law claims were preempted by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act ("FDCA"). Because, as explained below, we agree that removal was proper and that Plaintiffs' state law claims are preempted, we AFFIRM.
I. BACKGROUND
Defendants Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. ("BMS") and Pfizer Inc. ("Pfizer") are pharmaceutical companies that are incorporated in Delaware and maintain their principal places of business in New York. Together, Defendants manufacture and distribute Eliquis, a blood-thinning medication used to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. As might be expected, Eliquis increases patients' risk of bleeding. To that end, the drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012, carries warnings about the risk of serious, and possibly fatal, bleeding events.
In 2015, plaintiffs nationwide began to bring products liability actions against Defendants, asserting that they or their decedents had suffered excessive bleeding after taking Eliquis that resulted in substantial injury (both physical and financial) or even death. Although the suits arose under the laws of several states, plaintiffs generally alleged that the injuries they or their decedents suffered were attributable to the improper design of Eliquis and the insufficient warning labels that accompanied the drug. Seventeen such suits made their way to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where they were assigned to Judge Cote. The district court ordered the parties to identify a single bellwether case, and the parties selected Utts v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. , No. 16-cv-5688, for that purpose. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint in that exemplar action, and on December 23, 2016, the district court granted Defendants' motion in part. See Utts v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. ,
Following the district court's dismissal of the original complaint in Utts , the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred all Eliquis products liability actions pending in federal court to the Southern *703District of New York and assigned them to Judge Cote. See S.D.N.Y. Case. No. 17-md-2754 (DLC), Doc. No. 1. Judge Cote thereafter determined that the best procedure for the MDL would be to (1) allow the plaintiffs in Utts to amend their complaint again, (2) have the parties brief a motion to dismiss that complaint, and then, (3) following its ruling on the motion to dismiss the amended complaint in Utts , permit the parties either to (a) proceed to discovery in all cases (if the motion were denied) or (b) have the non-Utts plaintiffs show cause why their similar complaints should not also be dismissed on the grounds set out in the Utts opinion. The parties agreed.
The plaintiffs in Utts amended their complaint on February 24, 2017, setting out ten claims for: (1) manufacturing defect; (2) failure to warn; (3) strict liability; (4) negligence; (5) breach of express warranty; (6) breach of implied warranty; (7) fraudulent concealment; (8) negligent misrepresentation; (9) violation of the California consumer protection laws; and (10) loss of consortium. Defendants again moved to dismiss, and the district court again granted the motion, rejecting all of the Utts plaintiffs' claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). See Utts v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. ,
As it had earlier in the case, the district court set out its reasoning in an exemplar opinion - this time, Fortner v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. , No. 17-cv-1562 (DLC),
However, at the time the district court dismissed the nineteen actions before it, not all Eliquis cases pending nationwide had become part of the MDL. Thus, at least thirty-three cases - all brought by the same counsel, Salim-Beasley, LLC - were pending in federal court in California awaiting transfer to the MDL at the time of Utts II . Following the district court's dismissal order in Utts II , the plaintiffs in these thirty-three California actions voluntarily dismissed their suits without prejudice and refiled them in Delaware state court. Two days later, Defendants - who had not yet been served with the Delaware complaints - removed the actions to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and requested that they be transferred and consolidated into the MDL before Judge Cote. For their part, the plaintiffs in the thirty-three Delaware actions asked the District of Delaware to remand their cases to state court, arguing that because the only basis for federal court jurisdiction was diversity of citizenship, Defendants' status as citizens of Delaware meant that removal was prohibited *704under
Nevertheless, additional Eliquis plaintiffs - also represented by Salim-Beasley, LLC - adopted a new strategy whereby they filed a series of new suits in Delaware state court. When Defendants again removed the cases to federal court in Delaware before service, the new plaintiffs consented to the transfer of these removed actions to the MDL, and then asked Judge Cote to remand the suits to Delaware state court. See, e.g. , Cheung v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. ,
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
"We review a district court's denial of a motion to remand de novo ." O'Donnell v. AXA Equitable Life Ins. Co. ,
III. DISCUSSION
A. Removal
Plaintiffs first challenge the district court's denial of their motions to remand the Transferred Actions. Specifically, Plaintiffs argue that because the only basis for federal court jurisdiction is diversity of citizenship,
Generally, any civil suit initiated in state court over which a district court would have had original jurisdiction "may be removed by ... the defendants, to the district court of the United States for the district ... embracing the place where such action is pending."
In the usual case, application of the forum defendant rule is straightforward: a defendant is sued in a diversity action in the state courts of its home state, is served in accordance with state law, attempts to remove the case, and is rebuffed by a district court applying Section 1441(b)(2). See, e.g. , Wilmington Tr., N.A. v. Pearson , No. 18-cv-4845 (PAC),
"Every exercise in statutory construction must begin with the words of the text." Saks v. Franklin Covey Co. ,
In fact, Plaintiffs do not even attempt to argue that the text of Section 1441(b)(2) supports their position. Instead, Plaintiffs argue that the Court should depart from the plain meaning of Section 1441(b)(2) because applying the text of the statute (1) produces an absurd result and (2) will lead to non-uniform application of the removal statute depending on the provisions of state law. Neither argument is persuasive.
"It is, to be sure, well-established that '[a] statute should be interpreted in a way that avoids absurd results.' " Sec. Exch. Comm'n v. Rosenthal ,
Plaintiffs argue that applying the plain text of Section 1441(b)(2) produces an absurd result in light of the overarching purpose of the removal statute, which is to allow an out-of-state defendant to escape prejudice in the state courts of the plaintiff's home state by ensuring that a fair federal tribunal is available. In light of this broad purpose, Plaintiffs frame the forum defendant rule as a carve-out, premised on the understanding that defendants are unlikely to be "home-towned" in their home state's courts. Plaintiffs then explain the inclusion of the phrase "properly joined and served" as Congress's further recognition that crafty plaintiffs might take advantage of the forum defendant rule to secure a state-court trial by naming an unnecessary home-state defendant against which they did not intend to proceed. Thus, Plaintiffs assert that it is absurd to allow a home-state defendant to use an exception meant to protect defendants from unfair bias (in the courts of a plaintiff's home state) and language designed to shield them from gamesmanship (in the form of fraudulent joinder) to remove a lawsuit to federal court.
Plaintiffs are, of course, correct about the general purposes of the removal statute. See Lively v. Wild Oats Mkts., Inc. ,
Plaintiffs also urge us to look past the language of Section 1441(b)(2) to avoid "non-uniform application" of the forum defendant rule based on the vagaries of state law service requirements. Plaintiffs are correct that allowing home-state defendants to remove on the basis of diversity before they are served might mean that defendants sued in some states - those that require a delay between filing and service, like Delaware - will be able to remove diversity actions to federal court while defendants sued in others - those that permit a plaintiff to serve an action as soon as it is filed - will not. But state-by-state variation is not uncommon in federal litigation, including in the removal context, see, e.g. , Murphy Bros., Inc. v. Michetti Pipe Stringing, Inc. ,
*707Put simply, the result here - that a home-state defendant may in limited circumstances remove actions filed in state court on the basis of diversity of citizenship - is authorized by the text of Section 1441(b)(2) and is neither absurd nor fundamentally unfair. We therefore have no reason to depart from the statute's express language and must affirm the district court's denial of Plaintiffs' motions to remand.
B. Dismissal
Plaintiffs also challenge the district court's dismissal of the remaining sixty-four suits - fifteen of which are now before us - on the grounds that their failure-to-warn claims are preempted by the FDCA. Because we agree with the district court that Plaintiffs' negligence and strict liability claims, as alleged, are preempted, we affirm the dismissal of those claims.
The federal government regulates the manufacture, labeling, and sale of pharmaceuticals pursuant to the FDCA.
The FDA can direct a pharmaceutical manufacturer to change a drug's label after it has entered the market, see
allows drug manufacturers to change [a label] without the FDA's preapproval if the changes 'add or strengthen a contraindication, warning, precaution, or adverse reaction,' or 'add or strengthen an instruction about dosing and administration that is intended to increase the safe usage of the drug product,' in order to 'reflect newly acquired information.'
Wyeth ,
"The Supremacy Clause establishes that federal law 'shall be the supreme *708Law of the Land ... any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.' " PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing ,
Following Wyeth , PLIVA , and a third case that addressed FDCA preemption of state law failure-to-warn claims in connection with generic drugs, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co., Inc. v. Bartlett ,
Plaintiffs' claims here fail at the first step because, as the district court recognized, they consist of "conclusory and vague" allegations and do not plausibly allege the existence of newly acquired information that could have justified Defendants' revising the Eliquis label through the CBE regulation. For example, the operative complaint in Fortner v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. & Pfizer Inc. , which is representative of all the pleadings now before us, alleges that "[b]efore and after marketing Eliquis, [D]efendants became aware of many reports of serious hemorrhaging in users of [their] drugs" and that "[n]umerous ... studies published after Eliquis' approval in 2012 confirm the problematic bleeding events associated with Eliquis." Joint Appendix 1345-46, ¶¶ 62, 66. However, for these "reports" and "studies" to constitute newly acquired information, as the term is defined in
On appeal, Plaintiffs attempt to make hay out of the district court's references to Utts II in its Fortner opinion. Specifically, Plaintiffs argue that the Utts complaint attached nine "reports, studies, and articles" that the district court relied on in concluding that the Utts plaintiffs had failed to allege "newly acquired information" within the meaning of the relevant *709regulations. Utts II ,
Plaintiffs misread Fortner . Although the district court explained that the allegations in the operative complaint in that case simply amounted to a less-detailed restatement of the Utts II allegations, it did not dismiss the Fortner complaint because of the insufficiency of the sources cited in the second amended Utts complaint. Instead, it reasoned that the Fortner complaint - and, by extension, the other complaints now before this court - did not provide enough information about the existence of newly-acquired information to meet the Rule 8 threshold of "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 8(a)(2). Because we agree that Plaintiffs' complaints lack sufficient factual allegations to state a claim that is not preempted, we affirm the judgments below.
Moreover, had the district court erred in the manner Plaintiffs suggest (which it did not), we would still affirm, since - as discussed above - Plaintiffs' complaints simply do not contain sufficient factual information to state a claim, and we "may affirm on any grounds for which there is a record sufficient to permit conclusions of law." Mitchell v. City of New York ,
IV. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's denial of the motions to remand the Transferred Actions and AFFIRM the district court's dismissal of the fifteen actions now before this Court.
The other forty-nine cases were voluntarily dismissed prior to oral argument. See Motion Order, No. 17-2638 (2d Cir. June 20, 2018), ECF No. 128.
The parties do not contest that the plaintiffs in all fifteen actions now before this Court are diverse from Defendants.
The District of Delaware reached the same conclusion - that the text of Section 1442(b)(2) was no barrier to pre-service removal by a home-state defendant - in denying the motion to remand the thirty-three California actions. Young ,
While Plaintiffs purport to contest the dismissal of their complaints in their entirety, they make no arguments regarding the district court's conclusion that their breach of warranty, fraud, or state consumer protection law claims were inadequately pled. For that reason, we decline to address those claims. See Norton v. Sam's Club ,
