LEWIS KAPLAN, District Judge
In a report and recommendation dated August 26, 2003, Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz recommended the denial of plaintiffs' motions to remand in these cases. A number of plaintiffs have filed objections. The objections all are overruled and the motions denied, substantially for the reasons set forth in the report and recommendation. One matter warrants brief comment.
Plaintiffs in three of the captioned cases have submitted with their objections excerpts from depositions of physician-defendants in support of their contention that there is a sufficient basis for the claims against these defendants. Absent good reason for doing so, a district court reviewing recommendations of a magistrate judge should not consider materials that were not submitted to the magistrate judge. Any other course would encourage piecemeal litigation and effectively waste the time of both the magistrate judge and the district judge. E.g., Virgin Enterprises Ltd. v. Virgin Cuts, Inc., 149 F. Supp.2d 220, 223 (E.D. Va. 2000); Morris v. Amalgamated Lithographers of America, 994 F. Supp. 161, 163 (S.D.N.Y. 1998). No such reason has been shown here.
The Court is not unsympathetic to the possibility that there may be some plaintiffs who have legitimate medical malpractice cases against physicians that are being delayed in proceeding to trial because they await further pretrial proceedings in this MDL, which is directed principally at the drug companies which manufactured the drug. Sympathy, however, is not a basis for deciding matters such as this. Nor is there any inequity in the positions in which such plaintiffs find themselves. They chose to join the physician defendants in their actions against the drug companies, frequently in transparent attempts to prevent removal by the drug companies. Having made their beds, they will not be heard to complain of the discomfort of lying in them — particularly where the option of seeking to sever and remand to the state courts their claims against the physician-defendants always is available to them.
The Court intends no view as to whether plaintiffs in these four cases, had they pleaded their claims against the physician-defendants differently, could have stated legally sufficient claims, much less as to whether any such claims would be meritorious.
SO ORDERED.