Last week, like most weeks during the past year, we spent a lot of our time on airplanes. One of those trips fell on a day with “lots of weather.”  All of our flights were delayed, although we were luckier than many.  When we landed at Dulles for our connecting flight home, the queue at the customer service booth comprised hundreds of stranded passengers looping around and around like the approach to Space Mountain, hoping, with varying degrees of impatience and panic, to reschedule canceled flights.  But our connecting flight was only late – very late.  We sat at our gate for almost three hours, then were finally allowed to board.  We buckled in, we watched a taciturn flight attendant demonstrate the seat belts we were already wearing, and then we sat.  For forty more minutes.  (By now, it was 12:30 a.m.)  Finally, the “flight deck” made an announcement:  we were sitting still because the trash can in the galley lacked a lid, and this was a “safety hazard” that had to be rectified before we could take off.  And so we were waiting for the “caterer,” a contractor, to bring a new trash can.  Eventually, a truck pulled up, but it was carrying the wrong type of trash can.  Ultimately, someone went next door to a plane that was done flying for the night — as all sane people were, by that point – and stole a trash can.  And we were on our way.

So who was at fault?   Was it the contractor, which (twice) provided the wrong trash can? Or was it the airline, which shall remain nameless because (trust me) it doesn’t need any more bad publicity and which specified and installed the trash can?  Depends on the nature of the claim, under a (very very) loose interpretation of today’s decision from the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

In Janusz v. Symmetry Medical, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88895 (E.D. Wis. June 9, 2017), the plaintiffs alleged that the femoral neck of their artificial hips systems broke, requiring additional surgeries to replace the hip system.  The femoral neck was a component, manufactured by the defendant according to specifications and instructions provided by the hip system’s fabricator (which was bankrupt by the time of suit).  The plaintiffs asserted claims sounding in negligence and strict liability against both companies, and the component manufacturer moved for summary judgment, asserting the so-called “contract specification defense” to the plaintiffs’ claims.  This is a component part manufacturer’s defense, and not one we have ever discussed here.  Hence, our interest in Janusz.

Under this defense, a manufacturer that “makes a product strictly in accordance with the design specifications of another is not liable in negligence unless the specifications are so obviously defective and dangerous that a contractor of reasonable prudence would have been put on notice that the product was dangerous and likely to cause injury.” Januscz, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88895, at *11 (citation omitted).  And, while this defense is not among the five defenses listed in Wisconsin’s product liability statute, the court held that the statute supplemented but did not supersede common-law doctrines that weren’t inconsistent with it.  While Wisconsin common law had not adopted the contract specification defense, either, it had adopted the “government contractor defense,” the underlying principles of which — declining to hold a contractor liable when it manufactured a product according  to the specifications of another – overlap those of the contract specification defense.  Under the government contractor defense, a contractor that “makes a product strictly in accordance with the design specifications of another is not liable in negligence unless the specifications are so obviously defective and dangerous that a contractor  of reasonable prudence would have been put on notice that the product was dangerous and likely to cause injury.” Id. at *12 (citation omitted).  This is essentially the same test used in the contract specification defense generally. See Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability §5, Reporters’ Note to Comment a (1998) (a “majority of courts” hold “that a manufacturer of a component part . . . cannot be held strictly liable . . . so long as the specifications provided are not so obviously dangerous that it would be unreasonable to follow them”) (citation and quotation marks omitted).

In Januscz, however,  the court drew a distinction between negligence and strict liability that does not exist generally.  It held that, “[i]ntuitively,” it made sense that “an entity that has no role in designing a product should bear no liability if the product is defectively designed.” Id. at *12.  But “that intuitive  reaction follows only when plaintiff’s theory of recovery is negligence.” Id. (citations omitted).  And, “in Wisconsin, product liability was and is a matter of strict liability.” Id. at *13 (citations omitted).  In the strict liability context, unlike in negligence, “the focus is on the dangerousness of the product regardless of the defendant’s conduct.  Thus, a defendant may be blameless but strictly liable.” Id. (internal punctuation and citations omitted).  The court concluded that, given  the  “recent codification of product liability law reaffirming Wisconsin’s commitment to  the principles of  strict liability, if  presented with a question of whether the contract specification defense applies to a question of strict liability under Wisconsin law, the Wisconsin Supreme  Court would hold  that it does not.” Id. at *24. Januscz declared that “strict liability means strict liability.   It exists to shift costs associated with unsafe products to those  who are in the best position to disperse  those costs (be it through insurance, indemnification,  or some other means.” Id. at *25.  And, the court held, the “contract specification defense significantly undermines the policies underlying strict liability.  Therefore, the court concludes that the defense does not exist  under Wisconsin law.” Id. at *26.

This result is simply wrong under Wisconsin law. The Januscz court completely failed to cite the most relevant case, Schreiner v. Wieser Concrete Prod., Inc., 720 N.W.2d 525 (Wis. 2006), in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court expressly adopted Restatement Third §5 as “consistent with Wisconsin law.” Id. at 530.  Thus, Wisconsin law does not distinguish between negligence and strict liability, particularly in the context of product specifications and component parts. See also Spychalla v. Boeing Aerospace Operations Inc., 2015 WL 3504927, at *3 n.2 (E.D. Wis. June 3, 2015) (recognizing Wisconsin’s adoption of §5 after enacting of tort reform statute).  Indeed, after correctly holding that the Wisconsin tort reform statute only “supplements” the common law Januscz failed even to cite Restatement Third §5 – the relevant Wisconsin common law for component parts under Schreiner.  If anything, the statute reinforces use of the Third Restatement in Wisconsin, since the statute generally adopted that Restatement alternative design defect test and its “not reasonably safe” defect terminology. See Wis. Stat. §895.047(1)(a) (“A product is defective in design if the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the adoption of a reasonable alternative design by the manufacturer and the omission of the alternative design renders the product not reasonably safe.”).

Rather than actually follow Wisconsin law, the court simply repeated the truism that “strict liability does not mean absolute liability.”  2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88895, at *26 (emphasis in original).  To wit, a component manufacturer could escape liability if its component part underwent substantial change when it was included in the assembled device.  But, the court held, the defendant’s femoral neck component did not undergo such change.  And so the court denied summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ strict liability claims, though it granted summary judgment for the component manufacturer on the plaintiffs’ negligence claims.

While this interesting decision appears thorough at first glance, in fact it completely omits essential Wisconsin law, Schreiner and Restatement Third §5, and thus its discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of strict liability, based on Restatement Second §402A, which Wisconsin no longer follows, is (to be polite) open to question.  We hope that the defendant eventually convinces the court of the error of its ways.

 

It’s a fairly well known double standard. If you ask your child why he or she did that rotten, terrible, awful thing and he or she responds “just because” – that’s never good enough. When a parent is faced with the question “why,” however, “because I said so” is a fairly standard, albeit a bit of a crutch, response. If your child happens to have a litigator as a parent, the lesson that “just because” won’t cut it is learned very early. Litigators like to practice their cross-examination skills. Litigator-parents get that opportunity when faced with broken windows, missed curfews, and dented bumpers. DDL Blog litigator-parents not only cross-examine, we TwIqbal (actually seems to work well as a verb). We want supporting facts and they better be sufficient to “nudge” whatever explanation is being offered “across the line from conceivable to plausible.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 680 (2009).

That’s exactly what the judge was looking for in Staub v. Zimmer, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89109 (W.D. Wash. Jun. 9, 2017). Try as he might, however, he couldn’t find it. Plaintiff filed suit in Washington state alleging injury from the implantation of a prosthetic hip. Id. at *1. Following removal to federal court, defendant moved to dismiss.

In Washington, all products liability claims are subsumed under the Washington Product Liability Act (“WPLA”). Id. at *4. The WPLA allows a plaintiff to seek recovery for defective design; failure to warn; defective manufacture; or breach of express or implied warranty. Id. at *4-5. While a plaintiff does not have to specify in the complaint which precise theories he or she is pursuing, the complaint has to “contain sufficient non-conclusory factual allegations to support at least one avenue of relief.” Id. at *5. So, the court combed the Staub complaint to see if it met that basic requirement.

First, the court could find no indication anywhere in the complaint that plaintiff was alleging either failure to warn or breach of warranty. Id. at *5-6. The court was unwilling to read into the complaint claims that plaintiff appears to have failed to assert. As an aside the court pointed out that should plaintiff wish to pursue a failure to warn claim, it may be barred by the learned intermediary doctrine. Id. at *6n3. Perhaps a little foreshadowing?

The WPLA recognizes both the risk utility test and the consumer expectations test as bases for a design defect claim. So plaintiff’s complaint better have support for at least one of these theories. Plaintiff Staub, however, failed to adequately plead either. On risk utility, plaintiff only alleged that the product was “not reasonably safe.” Id. at *7. On consumer expectations, plaintiff only alleged that the device “failed to meet consumer expectations of safety.” Id. at *8. These are the pleading equivalent of “just because.” Parroting back the words of the elements of the claim do not suffice. Nowhere did plaintiff allege how a design element led to his alleged injury, whether there was a feasible alternative design, or how the product didn’t meet expectations. Id. at *7-8.

On his manufacturing claim, plaintiff failed to allege any facts showing that the device at issue deviated in any way from the intended design. Id. at *9. Once again, a bare bones allegation that the product was “defective and unreasonably dangerous” was far from satisfactory. Id. Plaintiff apparently made some attempt to save his manufacturing defect claim by alluding to the fact that the product had been voluntarily recalled. But without any allegations connecting the recall to plaintiff’s alleged injuries, the recall alone offers no support. Id. at *10n5.

Plaintiff is getting a do-over; he has 20 days to file an amended complaint. It’s sort of like, go to your room and when you come back you better having something better than “just because.”

Last week we bashed a Ninth Circuit Daubert decision.  We feel a little bit bad about that, not because the decision wasn’t bashworthy – no, Wendell really is a rotten precedent – but because we hate contributing to the chorus of defense hacks who bemoan the Ninth Circuit’s supposedly liberal, pro-plaintiff bias. You see, we began our legal career out West and would still be there but for a simple twist of fate.

When we clerked for the great and good Circuit Judge William A. Norris in Los Angeles, we were in the Ninth Circuit. Norris possessed both high principles and brilliant technical reasoning.  He grew up in a western Pennsylvania Gold Star family, served in the military, graduated from Princeton U. and Stanford Law, clerked for Justice Douglas, became a preeminent litigator who would beat you whether the issues were constitutional, administrative, or commercial, ran Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 California Primary campaign that saw success turn into tragedy, founded a major museum of contemporary art, and became a judicial giant who produced brilliant opinions and a lineup of SCOTUS clerks.

Norris did not fret over the Ninth Circuit’s reputation for SCOTUS reversals.  He tried to get things right.  Sometimes that meant getting out ahead of SCOTUS, as with his Watkins decision, which anticipated equal protection of gay rights. Working with Judge Norris was a privilege.  If there is an ounce of value to our legal writing, then most of that ounce comes from sessions sitting next to Norris in front of a computer screen, editing opinions word by word.  He insisted that the writing be concise and powerful.  He would bark out in joy whenever we eliminated unnecessary words.  Clear writing came from clear thinking, and Norris’s lightning fast brain always took a logical path through complexity.

Norris passed away this last January, filling us with grief and leaving us feeling like a judicial orphan.  A few months before his death, Judge Norris completed his autobiography, Liberal Opinions: My Life in the Stream of History.  It is a remarkable and uplifting story. Norris carved out a sparkling career in the law.  He also offered splendid advice, including the need to go with one’s gut.  (But do not follow this advice if your gut is an idiot.) We were startled to see on page 188 a quote from this blog defending the Ninth Circuit’s reputation.  Judge Norris’s approval meant – means – a lot to us.

The Ninth Circuit is vast.  It contains multitudes.  When we took our first deposition in San Diego, in a case involving (so help us) stolen dirt, we were in the Ninth Circuit.  When we interviewed a witness in the FBI’s Honolulu office, we were in the Ninth Circuit. When we traveled with DCIS agents and postal inspectors to Las Vegas to round up a check-stealing ring, we were in the Ninth Circuit.  When we did a presentation on litigation and pop culture at the hotel that was the setting for the Twin Peaks television show and movie (Snoqualmie Falls, Washington) we were in the Ninth Circuit.  When we took home the Drug and Device Law Infants from Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills, we were in the Ninth Circuit. So were we when we carried those kids on backpacks through Yosemite Valley and, later, hiked alongside them past Yellowstone’s geysers.   (Now we’re just getting sentimental.). Here’s the point: is it any wonder that the Ninth Circuit has, not just the most opinions of any Circuit, but the broadest range of issues and a sometimes perplexing array of outcomes?  Petulant calls to divide this magnificent Circuit, which contains one-fifth the country’s population, make no sense.  How to divide?  Create a California-only Circuit? That would be unprecedented.  Plus, we’d certainly get more Circuit splits.  What’s good about that? Why do we insist on dwelling in echo-chambers, occasionally stepping outside only to hurl invectives? The Ninth Circuit is a model, not a problem.

Which is not to say that the Ninth Circuit is free from mistakes.  We already mentioned Wendell.  Today, we are discussing a case that seems headed for the Supreme Court.  We do not know if it contains mistakes – it turns on a nice issue of first amendment law, and we know just enough about that area to know there are plenty of people out there who know more.  Retail Digital Network, LLC v. Prieto, 2017 WL 2562047 (9th Cir. en banc June 14, 2017), matters to us because it turns on an interpretation of the SCOTUS Sorrell decision from 2011.  We have blogged about Sorrell several times.  For example, check out this post.

Here is a brief Sorrell refresher.  Vermont passed a law preventing pharma retailers from accessing information about which physicians prescribe which drugs. Data miners, who gathered and disseminated such information, challenged the Vermont statutes as violating the first amendment.  SCOTUS struck the statute down.  Our favorite part of the decision is that “[s]peech in aid of pharmaceutical marketing … is a form of expression protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment.”  The Sorrell court held that the Vermont statute disfavored marketing, that is, speech with a particular content, and disfavored specific speakers, namely pharmaceutical manufacturers. In arriving at its result, the Sorrell court did not exactly follow the dance-steps set out in the Central Hudson commercial speech test.  The Sorrell court referenced “heightened scrutiny,” which is different terminology from the “intermediate scrutiny” in Central Hudson.

So what?  What indeed. When we first discussed the Sorrell case, we wondered what the case meant for constitutional protection of truthful off-label communications.  We also wondered whether Sorrell had expanded protection of free speech beyond Central Hudson.

It is that latter question that the Ninth Circuit en banc panel confronted in Retail Digital Network.  That case involved regulation of the marketing of alcohol, not pharmaceuticals, but the animating principles are potentially important for both.  California law prohibits alcohol manufacturers and wholesalers from providing anything of value to retailers in exchange for advertising their products.  In a pre-Sorrell Ninth Circuit case called Actimedia, the Ninth Circuit had applied the Central Hudson test to uphold California’s law, holding that it directly advanced important state interests in separating alcohol manufacturing, wholesale, and retail interests, as well as the state’s interest in temperance. The district court felt bound by Actimedia, and upheld the statute.  The original Ninth Circuit panel in Retail Digital Network held that Sorrell had created a more demanding first amendment test, that, consequently, Actimedia was no longer good law, and that the district court needed to consider whether the California statute could survive Sorrell‘s  “heightened scrutiny.”  The en banc panel reversed the original panel’s reversal of the district court. (Got that?).

The en banc panel reasoned that Sorrell had not really changed the Central Hudson test in any substantive way.  The “heightened scrutiny” phrase was merely intended by SCOTUS to mean more heightened than rational basis review.  In other words, “heightened” equals “intermediate.”  Thus, Actimedia was still good law.  Mostly.  The Retail Digital Network en banc panel concluded that Actimedia was correct that the California statute advanced the state’s interest in separating manufacturing, wholesale, and retail players in the alcohol industry.  California has a legitimate interest in ensuring that advertising payments are not disguised forms of kickbacks and methods of securing vertical and horizontal integration harmful to consumers.  But the en banc panel no longer bought the proposition that restriction of payments for retail advertising would reduce overall  alcohol consumption.  At best, such a restriction might indirectly serve the temperance goal, and that does not cut it under Central Hudson.  Still, the California statute survives.

What to think about the Retail Digital Network opinion?  From our point of view, whether applying “heightened” or “intermediate” scrutiny, we think truthful off-label statements should be protected speech.  The term “promotion,” which seems meant to be pejorative, should not alter the analysis.  We’re not sure that the en banc opinion pays enough attention to the Sorrell discussion of content- and speaker-specific regulations. It’s perhaps too simplistic to say that all commercial speech is content- and speaker-specific. The FDA would be the first to say that it is regulating what manufacturers say, but not what doctors or researchers say.  Will SCOTUS reverse the en banc panel’s reversal of the original panel’s reversal of the district court’s strike-down of the statute?  (Got that?). Keep in mind that the Ninth Circuit en banc panel is joining the Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits in holding that the Central Hudson test for commercial speech lingers beyond the Sorrell holding.  Moreover, the make-up of the Ninth Circuit panel (remember, Ninth Circuit en banc panels do not include all the active judges in the Circuit) is interesting.  The only dissenter was Chief Judge Thomas. (The Chief Judge is always on en banc panels).  All the other judges voted that Central Hudson still supplies the test.  Among those judges in the majority were Kozinski and Reinhardt. When those two judges, universally considered among the most brilliant judges from the conservative and liberal schools, respectively (yes, we know that is a vast simplification, but forgive us), agree on something, one should be slow to predict SCOTUS reversal.

Then again, Monday’s SCOTUS decision in Matal v. Tam, which struck down the rule against trademarks that disparage persons, might have something to say about Retail Digital Network.  Most commentators have discussed what the Matal case means for the Washington D.C. National Football League team.  But Matal also applied a very muscular version of the Central Hudson test in holding that the non-disparagement provision was not a sufficiently “narrowly drawn” means of advancing “a substantial interest.”  One such asserted substantial interest in Matal was the orderly flow of commerce.  That is not exactly the same interest sustained by the Ninth Circuit in Retail Digital Network, but it is pretty close.  Stay tuned.

The Supreme Court decided “the big one” today – and not to keep anyone in suspense [the big one is a major earthquake in California mass tort litigation], the result is that the California Supreme Court finding of personal jurisdiction despite neither the plaintiff nor the defendant residing in the state has been reversed. Here is a link to the slip opinion in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, No. 16-466 (U.S. June 19, 2017) (“BMS”).  It’s an 8-1 opinion, not a close decision, with Justice Alito writing for the Court.  Only Justice Sotomayor (predictably, from her prior positions) dissented.

After BMS, a lot of the litigation industry in California will go sliding into the sea.

This is one of the most important mass tort/product liability decisions ever, because expansive notions of personal jurisdiction – that large companies can be sued by anyone anywhere – are behind the growth of “magnet jurisdictions” (ATRA calls them something else) that attract litigation tourist plaintiffs from all over the country, suing companies from all over the country, without regard for whether any such defendant is incorporated or does business in the state.  Get rid of any personal jurisdiction basis for doing so, and we, if not end, at least put major limits on plaintiffs’ ability to forum-shop in this manner.

In our sandbox, product liability plaintiffs, suing manufacturers of FDA-regulated products, have flocked to what they view as their most favorable venues, certain notorious counties in Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York – and yes, California. That’s what BMS rejected.  For several decades, plaintiffs’ litigation tourist strategy relied on expansive interpretation of “general” personal jurisdiction – that any defendant that conducted “continuous and substantial” business in any state could be sued in that state by anyone.  This theory was damaged by Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011) (which we call “Brown”), and then demolished altogether in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S.Ct. 746 (2014) (which we call “Bauman”).

After Bauman, mere “continuous and substantial” business in a jurisdiction could not support general personal jurisdiction.  Rather only corporate defendants “at home” in the particular jurisdiction could be sued there. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. at 757; Brown, 564 U.S. at 919.  With no “exceptional” exceptions that apply to mass torts, Bauman limited general personal jurisdiction to those states where a corporation is incorporated or has its principal place of business. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. at 760-61.  “Exorbitant” and “grasping” jurisdictional allegations that would expand jurisdiction to “every other State” where large corporations do business, violate Due Process. Id. at 761-62.  “A corporation that operates in many places can scarcely be deemed at home in all of them.” Id. at 761 n.19.

Bauman thus threatened the viability of litigation tourism the litigation industry in numerous plaintiff-friendly venues, since 90%+ of the plaintiffs in such venues are typically non-residents.  Plaintiffs fought back.  The ink on Bauman was barely dry when they started trying to import the same expanded “continuous and substantial” rationale into the other major basis for personal jurisdiction, “specific” personal jurisdiction, which heretofore had been limited to suits “related to” the forum state – that is suits brought by in-state residents or persons injured in a state.  By a 4-3 margin, the California Supreme Court in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 377 P.3d 874 (Cal. 2016) (which we’ll call “BMS II”), conferred specific personal jurisdiction on litigation tourist plaintiffs from all over the country suing over a prescription drug.

No more.

As reiterated by the United States Supreme Court in BMS, the “primary consideration” of personal jurisdiction  is “the burden on the defendant.”  Slip op. at 6 (quotingWorld-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 292 (1980)).  While general jurisdiction is governed by Bauman’s “at home” requirements as to corporate defendants, “[s]pecific jurisdiction is very different.” Id. at 5.  “The suit” itself – not just some other aspect of litigation – “must arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.” Id. (emphasis original) (citation and quotation marks omitted).

[S]pecific jurisdiction is confined to adjudication of issues deriving from, or connected with, the very controversy that establishes jurisdiction.

Id. at 6 (quoting Brown, 564 U. S. at 918).

The California Supreme Court’s BMS II ruling that any “substantial connection” between a corporate defendant’s activities and California, whether or not causally related to a litigation tourist plaintiff’s claimed injuries, would suffice to support jurisdiction failed miserably.  Personal jurisdiction reflects a concern with “submitting to the coercive power of a State that may have little legitimate interest in the claims in question.”  BMS, slip op. at 6.  That would be California in this case, where the litigation tourist plaintiffs did not reside in the state and did not sue over a drug that they purchased in the state.  When there is no “affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy, . . . specific jurisdiction is lacking regardless of the extent of a defendant’s unconnected activities in the State.”  Id. at 7 (emphasis added).  We believed from day one that the California Supreme Court had improperly imported the general jurisdiction test rejected in Bauman into specific jurisdiction. In BMS the Supreme Court agreed:

[T]he California Supreme Court’s “sliding scale approach” is difficult to square with our precedents. Under the California approach, the strength of the requisite connection between the forum and the specific claims at issue is relaxed if the defendant has extensive forum contacts that are unrelated to those claims.  Our cases provide no support for this approach, which resembles a loose and spurious form of general jurisdiction.

Id.  “Loose and spurious” – that’s a good description of the basis for most litigation tourism in mass torts.

The State Supreme Court found that specific jurisdiction was present without identifying any adequate link between the State and the nonresidents’ claims. . . .  [T]he nonresidents were not prescribed [the drug] in California, did not purchase [it] in California, did not ingest [it] in California, and were not injured by [it] in California.  The mere fact that other plaintiffs were prescribed, obtained, and ingested [the drug] in California − and allegedly sustained the same injuries as did the nonresidents – does not allow the State to assert specific jurisdiction over the nonresidents’ claims.

Id. at 8 (citing Walden v. Fiore, 134 S. Ct. 1115, 1123 (2014)).  Nothing related solely to other plaintiffs matters in specific jurisdiction.  As we suspected it would be, Walden was the critical precedent here. BMS, slip op. at 8-9.  The cases plaintiffs relied upon, Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U. S. 770 (1984), and Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797 (1985), were “amply” distinguishable and “had no bearing on the question presented here.”  BMS, slip op. at 10-11.

Nor did the presence of a California distributor – equally uninvolved with the plaintiffs who brought the suit – change the result one iota.  Repeated prior precedents have held that personal jurisdiction “must be met as to each defendant over whom a state court exercises jurisdiction.”  Id. at 11 (citations and quotation marks omitted).  “The bare fact that BMS contracted with a California distributor is not enough to establish personal jurisdiction in the State.”  Id. at 12.  This ruling, while something of a side show in BMS, should be critical in other types of cases, such as asbestos, where dozens of defendants are typically joined together without regard for where either the defendants or plaintiffs are located.

Thus, unfortunately for litigation tourists, “a defendant’s general connections with the forum are not enough.”  Id. at 7.  Plaintiffs’ unrestricted forum shopping days are over.  “[S]traightforward” application of fundamental personal jurisdiction principles means that plaintiffs may “join[] together in a consolidated action in the States that have general jurisdiction over BMS.”  Otherwise, “the plaintiffs who are residents of a particular State . . . could probably sue together in their home States.”  Id.  Finally, while the Court did not address “whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same restrictions on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court, ” id. as we mentioned above, Walden v. Fiore was probably the single most important prior precedent in BMS.  As our post on Walden pointed out, Walden was a federal (Bivens) action filed in federal court.  We thus don’t see that caveat as being a meaningful one.

The result in BMS means that the era of big mass torts, filed by plaintiffs anywhere against anyone over anything, is (to paraphrase Bill Clinton) over.  There will be still be mass torts, but as BMS pointed out at the end of the opinion, they will either be defendant-specific − filed in the target defendant’s state of incorporation or principal place of business – or limited to plaintiffs from the state where the litigation is situate.  San Francisco (as in BMS), Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Madison County, wherever….  These jurisdictions can only assert jurisdiction over in-state plaintiffs, or else defendants that are (unfortunate enough to be) “at home” in those respective states (subject, of course, to state venue requirements).

A very good day for the right side of the “v.” – and not very good for those on the wrong side.  Plaintiffs will have to get used to the radical proposition that defendants have constitutional rights, too.

The only remaining personal jurisdiction theory available to the great majority of litigation tourist plaintiffs is the so-called “jurisdiction by consent” theory that posits that mere registration to do business/appointment of an agent for service of process – something that all 50 states require – constitutes “consent” to be sued even by non-residents in any state where a corporate defendant so registers. Of course, a lot of states (including California since way before Bauman) do not interpret their personal jurisdiction statutes in that manner (see our discussions here and here).  Critically, as we’ve also pointed out before (including in our post-Bauman personal jurisdiction cheat sheet, which we will be now be converting to a consent cheat sheet), that consent theory would be just as expansive, and thus just as  violative of Due Process, as the general and specific jurisdiction theories rejected in Bauman and BMS, respectively.

Remember, the basis for all of the Court’s jurisdictional jurisprudence is Due Process. “[A] state court’s assertion of jurisdiction exposes defendants to the State’s coercive power,” so that assertion “is subject to review for compatibility with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”  BMS, slip op. at 5 (citation and quotation marks omitted).  Plaintiffs should not expect to achieve the same unconstitutional result by other means, such as expanding state corporate registration statutes beyond recognition.  Plaintiffs in BMS could not escape Bauman in that fashion.  Future plaintiffs should not expect to escape both Bauman and BMS with yet another subterfuge.  Under Due Process, there must be “a connection between the forum and the specific claims at issue.”  BMS, slip op. at 8.

Finally, we’d also like to point out one more implication of today’s BMS decision – it affects available venues for a large number of federal causes of action.  The general federal venue statute, 28 U.S.C. §1391, provides that, “[f]or all venue purposes,” a corporation “shall be deemed to reside, if a defendant, in any judicial district in which such defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction.”  Thus, by the terms of §1391, the scope of personal jurisdiction recognized in BMS (subject to the Court’s final caveat in BMS about federal personal jurisdiction) also becomes the template for the permissible venue choices available to federal plaintiffs bringing suit under any federal statute that does not contain its own statute-specific venue provisions.

We have two posts on innovator liability that we update on a consistent basis: our innovator liability scorecard, and our “Innovator Liability at 100” state-by-state collection of materials that we originally compiled when the one-hundredth judicial opinion on this topic was decided.  Well, not too long ago the Fourth Circuit, in McNair v. Johnson & Johnson, ___ F. Appx. ___, 2017 WL 2333843 (4th Cir. May 30, 2017), did what no court of appeals had done since the innovator liability first reared its ugly head in 1994 – it certified the question to the relevant state high court – in this case, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals:

Whether West Virginia law permits a claim of failure to warn and negligent misrepresentation against a branded drug manufacturer when the drug ingested was produced by a generic manufacturer.

2017 WL 2333843, at *1.

At least a dozen federal court of appeals decisions have rejected innovator liability under the laws of some two dozen states. Ironically, the first to do so was the Fourth Circuit itself, in Foster v. American Home Products Corp., 29 F.3d 165, 168, 171 (4th Cir. 1994), under Maryland law.  Plaintiffs did not begin resorting to the delaying tactic of requesting state court certification until relatively late in the game.  Courts of appeals were not accommodating, refusing to certify what they saw as an outlier issue in Johnson v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., 758 F.3d 605, 614-15 (5th Cir. 2014); Strayhorn v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, 737 F.3d 387, 406-07 (6th Cir. Dec. 2, 2013). See also In re Darvocet, Darvon & Propoxyphene Products Liability Litigation, 2012 WL 3610237, at *3 (E.D. Ky. Aug. 21, 2012), aff’d, 756 F.3d 917 (6th Cir. 2014); Mosley v. Wyeth, Inc., 719 F. Supp. 2d 1340, 1351 n.9 (S.D. Ala. 2010) (district courts refusing certification motions).  But plaintiffs got lucky (for a few months) in Wyeth, Inc. v. Weeks, 159 So. 3d 649, 653 (Ala. 2014), with a certified question, and with nothing left to lose they’ve been trying it ever since.

McNair is not only an outlier procedurally, but is troubling substantively.  First, the Fourth Circuit’s certification opinion seems more concerned with preemption rather than state law – addressing preemption before even bothering with state-law causation principles, and finishing that section with the observation, “while a state law failure-to-warn claim against a generic manufacturer is preempted, such claims are not preempted as to the warnings on a brand-name drug distributed by a brand-name manufacturer.”  2017 WL 2333843, at *3 (emphasis original).  Ordinarily, the existence of a recognized state law claim precedes any decision on whether that claim is preempted.  We always find it troubling when a federal court views principles of state law more through the lens of a preemption dodge than on their merits.

Although pointing out (as could hardly be denied) that even in the current preemption environment, “overwhelming” precedent rejects innovator liability, McNair, 2017 WL 2333843, at *4, the certification order makes it appear as if there is no prior West Virginia law on this subject.  That is simply not so.  As we state in our Innovator Liability at 100 post:

In In re Darvocet, Darvon, & Propoxyphene Products Liability Litigation, 756 F.3d 917 (6th Cir. 2014), the Sixth Circuit concluded that West Virginia “has rejected claims attempting to impose liability on brand manufacturers where plaintiffs ingested only generic drugs.”  Id. at 953.  Darvocet relied upon Meade v. Parsley, 2009 WL 3806716 (S.D.W. Va. Nov. 13, 2009).

[Innovator defendants] are not responsible for the damage resulting from a product that they did not manufacture, distribute or sell. . . .  Product liability law in West Virginia allows for recovery when the plaintiff can prove that “a product was defective when it left the manufacturer and the defective product was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries.”  Because neither [innovator defendant] manufactured the product that injured plaintiffs, there is no proximate cause.

Id. at *2-3 (quoting Dunn v. Kanawha County Board of Education, 459 S.E.2d 151, 157 (W. Va. 1995)).

That the Fourth Circuit would decide to omit all of the most directly on-point West Virginia law-based precedent – including a published court of appeals decision − from its certification order is simply inexplicable.  Certainly, ignorance cannot be claimed, as both the Darvocet and Meade decisions were relied upon by the district court in McNair itself.  McNair v. Johnson & Johnson, 2015 WL 3935787, at *6 (S.D.W. Va. June 26, 2015).  We can only hope that the West Virginia high court (docket available here) will not be misled by these omissions.

 

Earlier this week, we posted on the Ninth Circuit’s conversion of the Daubert’s gate (that the trial court should keep) into more of a swinging saloon door.  A week before the Ninth Circuit ruled that a trial court had erred in excluding unreliable causation testimony (and granting summary judgment as a result), the Third Circuit had affirmed a trial court’s exclusion of unreliable causation testimony (and grant of summary judgment as a result).  Even though we are discussing In re Zoloft (Sertraline Hydrochloride) Prods. Liab. Litig., __ F.3d __, 2017 WL 2385279 (3d Cir. 2017), second, it really is a bigger deal because it reaffirmed the end of an entire MDL.

We followed the district court’s Daubert rulings on the epidemiology and mechanism experts offered for all the plaintiffs.  We watched in amazement as the plaintiffs got to try again and still could not offer reliable expert testimony on general causation.   With our typical restraint, we applauded the court’s subsequent decision that no plaintiff could make out a case for general causation between maternal use of the drug and the cardiac birth defects claimed without the excluded experts and that was fatal to their claims.  We found that the plaintiffs, maybe because of the sympathy associated with their claimed injuries, got plenty of leeway before the court determined that there was simply no there (i.e., good science) there.  (Along the way, we saw that Pennsylvania and West Virginia state courts came to similar conclusions.)

The appeal to the Third Circuit focused on whether the biostatistician offered as a back-up expert on epidemiology was properly excluded, with plaintiffs conceding that they should have lost if he was.  Plaintiffs’ central contention was that the district court created a standard that requires general causation opinions to be “supported by replicated observational studies reporting a statistically significant association between the drug and the adverse effect.”  We think that standard, similar to Havner and Daubert II, is a fine standard, but the district court did not create or apply such a standard in knocking out the biostatistician.  Likewise, the Third Circuit declined to “state a bright-line rule” that “statistical significance is necessary to prove causality.”  (We think it is, because the Bradford Hill Criteria, which the biostatistician purported to apply, starts with an association demonstrated through epidemiologic studies.  We will try to resist arguing for the tighter standard given the result.)  The district court considered the lack of multiple statistically significant studies supporting an association to be contrary to what teratologists generally require and thus relevant to whether an opinion without such support was unreliable.  A flexible approach to evaluating the reliability of a general causation opinion was fine with the Third Circuit and its reading of the Bradford Hill Criteria.  (There is flexibility, but only when there is an association from epidemiologic studies as a predicate.  OK, we will have to try harder.)

The Third Circuit “accept[ed] that the Bradford Hill and weight of the evidence analyses are generally reliable.  We also assume that the ‘techniques’ used to implement the analysis (here, meta-analysis, trend analysis, and reanalysis) are themselves reliable.”  That assumption is dicta—which is a good thing—because the court concluded that the biostatistician did not reliably apply the methodology or techniques that he claimed to be applying.  First, he gave lip service to analyzing “multiple positive, insignificant results,” but he really just eyeballed trends.  Second, his trend analysis was based on cherry picking and inconsistent application of basic statistics principles.  Third, his meta-analysis was also result-driven, as he could not justify why he included some studies and excluded others.  Fourth, his reanalysis was done for no reason but to conclude that a published study reporting no association should have found one.  Altogether, “the fact that Dr. Jewell applied these techniques inconsistently, without explanation, to different subsets of the body of evidence raises real issues of reliability.  Conclusions drawn from such unreliable application are themselves questionable.”

The court probably could have stopped there.  It went on to detail how the biostatistician’s purported application of Bradford Hill was riddled with errors that he could not explain.  This was more than enough to conclude that the district court had not abused its discretion in excluding the expert.

Along the way, however, it noted that it may be possible to have a reliable reanalysis that draws a different conclusion than the original published study and that an expert can make unsupported assumptions in connection with doing an “informational” reanalysis.  It offered that “[t]hese inquiries are more appropriately left to the jury.”  We disagree and think the broader context has to be considered.  A plaintiff’s expert offered on the epidemiologic evidence who cannot offer a reliable opinion that there is an association between the exposure and the type of injury the plaintiff claims, let alone that there is a causal relationship, should not be talking to the jury about anything.  A plaintiff’s expert offered on the epidemiologic evidence who can offer a reliable opinion that there is a causal relationship between the exposure and the type of injury the plaintiff claims can be allowed to discuss the various analyses she did to form that opinion.  And the defense can cross-examine her on whether some of her analysis was result-driven for-litigation drivel or based on unsupported assumptions.  A jury can hear that sort of back and forth and decide what weight to give to the expert’s testimony on general causation.  However, no trial court should abrogate its gatekeeping role and let juries hear about reanalysis of published studies unless plaintiffs have reliable evidence of general causation in the first place.  I guess we prefer the opinions of the district court, which took its gatekeeping seriously, even if it let plaintiffs take a few shots at entry.

Here’s the crux of today’s case, In re Trader Joe’s Tuna Litig., 2017 WL 2408117, at *1 (C.D. Cal. Jun. 2, 2017):

Plaintiffs determined that the Trader Joe’s tuna cans were underfilled and underweight by commissioning testing with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) on December 1, 2015. NOAA tested several varieties of Trader Joe’s tuna according to the FDA’s standards for canned tuna, pursuant to 21 C.F.R. § 161.190. This statute determines the standard fill of tuna within a container based on its pressed cake weight.

Even though there’s more, we cut this block quote short because we saw the word “cake.” It’s distracting. Cake has always distracted us. It’s a minor miracle that it didn’t cause us to simply insert a post-ending ellipsis and begin a blurry daydream about cake, like a daydreaming scene in a movie. The only thing that stopped us was that the block quote also said “tuna.” We like tuna just fine. But tuna cake? That’s not so enticing.

Unless—apparently—you’re a class action plaintiffs’ lawyer. Ever in search of financial damages and the type of factual and legal sameness that leads to class certification, pressed cakes of tuna had the plaintiffs’ lawyers daydreaming. They dreamed of financial damages for underweighted tuna cans and the necessary sameness created by an FDA regulation that set the standard for weighing them. And so they gathered putative class representatives and filed claims ranging from breach of implied warranty of merchantability, unjust enrichment and fraud to violations of New York General Business Law §§ 349, 350 and violations of the ever-present California Consumer Legal Remedies Act, Unfair Competition Law, and False Advertising Law. Id.

And, while many of these claims are not typical in product liability litigation, they certainly do implicate defenses that are. The claims are—explicitly—premised on alleged violations of FDA regulations. And that allowed defendants to bring a motion to dismiss asserting a number of very familiar defenses, including implied preemption, conflict preemption, and primary jurisdiction. Id. at *2. For instance, primary jurisdiction was in play because, according to defendants (id. at *1), the FDA was actively considering revising its weight regulation that relied on pressed cake. . . . . . .

. . . Yum, there it is again. Cake. We’re imagining it as chocolate cake—with chocolate icing. Better yet, chocolate ganache. That’s probably the same as chocolate icing, but it sounds so much tastier. And no “erries”—that means, no blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, or anything like them. They get in the way of the chocolate without being nearly as good. It’s fine to include vanilla, preferably as ice cream. But that’s it. No other additions. That is, unless we make it a chocolate soufflé—or bread pudding. Or how about a three-course meal of chocolate cake, soufflé and bread pudding . . . . .

Oh, sorry. Back to the law. . . . . .

It wasn’t primary jurisdiction that won dismissal. It was implied preemption under Buckman. A reminder on the standard:

The plaintiff must be suing for conduct that violates the FDCA (or else his claim is expressly preempted by § 360k(a)), but the plaintiff must not be suing because the conduct violates the FDCA (such a claim would be impliedly preempted under Buckman). Perez v. Nidek Co., 711 F.3d 1109, 1120 (9th Cir. 2013) (quoting In re Medtronic, 623 F.3d 1200, 1204 (8th Cir. 2010) (emphasis in original)). Thus, “under principles of implied preemption … private litigants may not bring a state-law claim against a defendant when the state-law claim is in substance (even if not in form) a claim for violating the FDCA.” Loreto v. Procter & Gamble Co., 515 F. App’x 576, 579 (6th Cir. 2013)

Id. at *2.

And there simply was no way for the plaintiffs to get around the fact that they were absolutely suing “because” the underweighting of the tuna cases allegedly violated the FDA regulated testing standard. And so the court dismissed the claims:

In sum, Plaintiffs’ claims would not exist without the FDCA. Plaintiffs allege that Trader Joe’s misrepresented that its cans contained an adequate amount of tuna . . . . Plaintiffs also maintain that the reason the amount in the tuna cans was inadequate is because it failed to meet the pressed cake weight standard under 21 C.F.R. § 161.190. Consequently, the theory underlying Plaintiffs’ state-law claims depends entirely on an FDA regulation. Plaintiffs’ state law claims are in reality claimed violations of an FDA regulation, and therefore, the FDCA prohibits Plaintiffs from bringing them. On this basis, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.

Id. at *4.

Piece of cake.

Let’s start with a shameless plug: the author of this post, along with Sean Wajert (Shook Hardy & Bacon), will present a Strafford webinar on June 21 entitled, “Daubert/Frye Motions in Product Liability Litigation: Bringing or Defending Challenges to Expert Witness Evidence.”  Here is the link.  We will cover a lot of areas and a lot of cases.  Odds are good that the most recent case covered will be Wendell v. GlaxoSmithKline, LLC, 2017 WL 2381122 (9th Cir. June 2, 2017).  That’s too bad, because it is not a well-reasoned case.  It is a backwards step in Daubert analysis. For people who favor rigorous application of Daubert to keep junk science out of the courtroom, the Ninth Circuit’s Wendell decision is the worst sort, because it reverses a district court’s exclusion of expert opinions lacking support in epidemiology, animal studies or biologicals plausibility — meaning Wendell said it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to exclude the opinions.  That is the kind of precedent that can turn nervous judges from gatekeepers to matadors who grimly wave junk science along to the jury.

The plaintiffs in Wendell alleged that their son died because medicines used to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) caused him to develop cancer.  The plaintiffs proffered two causation experts, but the district court found their opinions unreliable and, therefore, inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.  The court subsequently granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants.  A key issue on appeal was the district court’s exclusion of the plaintiff experts’ opinions.  The district court had identified several problems with those opinions.  Here are some:

– The opinions were litigation-driven, were based on no independent research, and would not satisfy the standards for peer-reviewed journals.
– No animal or epidemiological studies showed a causal link.
– The studies cited by the experts did not show that the specific combination of drugs prescribed to the plaintiffs’ decedent actually caused the injury at issue.
– The experts did not present any scientific evidence excluding IBD itself as a risk factor for the injury.

The Ninth Circuit called it “a close question” in concluding that the district court erred in excluding the expert testimony. In the eyes of the appellate court, the litigation-driven, non-study-supported, non-alternate-cause-excluding nature of the expert opinions should not overcome the facts that the experts were “highly qualified doctors” who had performed a “differential diagnosis” in arriving at their opinions.  The Ninth Circuit’s analysis is unsatisfactory.  First, the qualifications of the experts is a different issue from reliability of their methodologies.  Under Rule 702, a qualified expert may testify if her testimony would be helpful to the jury, if she relied upon the appropriate facts/data, if she employed reliable methods, and if she reasonably applied those methods to the facts of the case.  That is, qualifications are a precursor to reliability, not a substitute for it.  If a Nobel prize winner renders an opinion based on astrology or phrenology, that opinion should be excluded no matter how impressed we are to be in the presence of such a luminary.  Second, the Ninth Circuit looks at each of the methodological problems identified by the district court one-by-one, and repeatedly holds that the deficiency by itself (e.g., lack of animal studies), cannot exclude expert testimony.  Maybe so, but when the opinions of an expert (no matter how well qualified) are beset by so many deficiencies, how can it be an abuse of discretion for a diligent district court to decide that the opinions do not pass muster?  In truth, the Ninth Circuit did not apply anything close to an abuse of discretion standard of review.  Rather, it engaged in a de novo review of the expert opinion issue, and did so in a remarkably wrong-headed fashion.  The results of this precedent could be seriously damaging.  If sparkling CV’s and invocations of “differential diagnosis” (and that’s not what was done by the experts by the way, but that’s a different point) can get causation opinions and a case to a jury, then Daubert has been diluted to the point of meaninglessness.

We will mimic the style of the great television critic Alan Sepinwall and end with some random observations:

– Along with two Ninth Circuit judges, the Wendell panel included a Vermont district judge who had authored an outlier opinion predicting that Vermont would adopt innovator liability.

– The Wendell opinion cites the Ferebee opinion from the D.C. Circuit.  Ferebee is seldom a harbinger of anything good for defendants.

– The Wendell opinion is sufficiently bad and problematic to merit en banc or Supreme Court reversal.

This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.

We understand that illnesses and injuries can be emotional; sometime extremely emotional and rightfully so. We understand that some treatments can add to the stress. We certainly understand that when a treatment results in complications or does not turn out as hoped, an already tense situation can become intense. We don’t deny the “personal” side of personal injury cases. But drug and device products liability cases are not infliction of emotional distress cases. Which is what the court found in Ripple v. Davol, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82867 (S.D. Fla. May 31, 2017).

Plaintiff brought most of the standard products liability causes of action – negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, breach of implied warranty, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud – but also included claims for both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.  Id. at *2. The court dismissed the warranty claim for lack of privity, id. at *10-11, and misrepresentation and fraud for failure to satisfy the heightened pleading requirement. Id. at *11-13.

On infliction of emotional distress, the court explained that under either an intentional or negligence standard, plaintiff has to allege “conduct so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” Id. at *7 (citations omitted). Just read that again and let it sink in. We think it is immediately apparent that such a claim does not belong in a drug or medical device case. We are talking about products that had to be approved by the FDA before being sold and the levels of testing, analysis, monitoring, and reporting that goes along with that. Satisfying all the FDA requirements and then marketing a medical device that can only be obtained via a licensed surgeon who must also implant the device is hardly an atrocity that would offend the bounds of decency.

Plaintiff’s only response was that her infliction of emotional distress claims were based on defendant’s failure to properly test or properly design the device. Id. at *8. The opinion contains citations to the type of conduct that does rise to the “utterly intolerable” level and the horrors described even briefly in the parentheticals make it abundantly clear that failure to test/design doesn’t even come close. Id. at *8-9.

If plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient, “any manufacturer who is liable for strict products liability or negligence is also liable for the infliction of emotional distress upon those damaged by the product.” Id. at *9. An infliction of emotional distress claim cannot be solely premised on ordinary products liability and negligence. It must involve a degree of “physical contact” or “severely threatening behavior.” Id. at *10. Neither of which is present in this case or in any drug/device case (at least that we can think of). With no supporting case law and no supporting facts, the court dismissed the claims with prejudice.

We don’t see a lot of infliction of emotional distress claims in this arena, probably for the very reasons discussed in Ripple. But the court’s explanation for why these claims are not viable is among the best we’ve seen.

This is our quasi-annual update to our cheat sheet about ediscovery for defendants.  Essentially that means using discovery to obtain access to what plaintiffs have said about themselves, and their supposed injuries, on social media.  Such material can be critical to defeating a plaintiff’s case. See Zamudio-Soto v. Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2017 WL 386375, at *11 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 27, 2017) (summary judgment on statute of limitations granted because plaintiff’s “Facebook post is even more indicative of suspicion [of causation]” than evidence that sufficed to defeat the discovery rule in binding Ninth Circuit decision).

However, we once again implore defendants – be reasonable.  Don’t do what we complain about the other side doing.  Don’t make unbounded requests for all social media at all times about everything.  Having just read a bunch of ediscovery cases about social media, we can state with confidence that such open-ended discovery is the quickest way to make bad precedent, the kind we don’t put on our cheat sheets, in this area.

Since discovery issues involving social media can arise in a many types of non-drug/device litigation – and even outside of personal injury altogether (think employment-related suits, for one thing) – this is a different kind of cheat sheet.  Instead of collecting cases as they come down via our weekly prescription medical product-related searches, we have to go out and research this issue specifically.  We’re lazy, so that doesn’t happen more than once a year or so.  The summaries below have been added to the cheat sheet itself, but we’re presenting them here as well.  As always with cheat sheets, we compile only those favorable to our side, which means those cases that allow all, or substantially all, of the discovery being sought.

  • Baxter v. Anderson, 2016 WL 4443178 (Mag. M.D. La. Aug. 19, 2016). Ordering plaintiff to identify every social networking website used or accessed since her accident, and where she posted photographs or other information, as well as usernames and the last date of access. Plaintiff must also produce all postings, including photographs, since the accident about the claims and defenses of the litigation, as well as postings about her alleged physical injuries and her physical capabilities.
  • Zamora v. GC Services, LP, 2016 WL 8853096 (Mag. W.D. Tex. Aug. 19, 2016). Plaintiff ordered to respond to discovery demand for all social media postings, recordings, and text messages, that concern the factual allegations plaintiff is making in the lawsuit.
  • McDonald v. Escape the Room Experience, LLC, 2016 WL 5793992 (Mag. S.D.N.Y. Sept. 21, 2016). Motion to compel granted ordering plaintiff to produce postings about plaintiff’s socializing, her attendance at parties or other social outings, and her participation in performances or other employment activities. Plaintiff’s production must include her complete postings, during the relevant time period, on any electronic social media or internet sites, including dating sites.
  • Jacquelyn v. Macy’s Retail Holdings, Inc., 2016 WL 6246798 (Mag. S.D. Ga. Oct. 24, 2016). No threshold showing is necessary before a defendant can seek discovery of social media evidence. Such a rule would shield from discovery Facebook users who do not share information publicly. Where a plaintiff puts physical condition and quality of life at issue, Facebook postings reflecting physical capacity and inconsistent activities are relevant and discoverable. Plaintiffs must produce: (1) all photographs posted by plaintiffs or in which they are tagged; (2) all comments to those photographs; (3) all posts by plaintiffs relating to activities in which plaintiffs contend they could not participate due to the incident; and (4) any posts referencing their claimed injuries, damages, or loss of enjoyment of life since the incident.
  • Scott v. United States Postal Service, 2016 WL 7440468 (Mag. M.D. La. Dec. 27, 2016). Where plaintiff has put her physical condition and activities at issue by filing a lawsuit, social media concerning those matters is discoverable. Defendant came forward with evidence that relevant social media existed. Plaintiff can also be required to identify all social media used since the accident and all postings related to any type of physical or athletic activities since the accident. To ensure completeness, plaintiff must retain historical data for all social media and review for responsive information. If such information is unavailable, plaintiff must describe the steps she took to locate and review responsive information.
  • Brown v. City of Ferguson, 2017 WL 386544 (E.D. Mo. Jan. 27, 2017). Social media discovery is no different than any other discovery. Social media is neither privileged nor protected by a right of privacy. Plaintiffs must produce all social media content with any relevance to the case, for five years prior to the incident, including private messages sent through Facebook messenger.
  • Gee v. Citizens Insurance Co., 2017 WL 694711 (Mich. App. Feb. 21, 2017) (unpublished). Affirming dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint as a sanction for deliberately deleting social media information to evade discovery.
  • Gordon v. T.G.R. Logistics, Inc., ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2017 WL 1947537 (D. Wyo. May 10, 2017). Plaintiff required to produce all social media history about her significant emotional turmoil, any mental disability or ability, or significant events which reasonably could result in emotional distress. Plaintiff also required to produce all Facebook postings which reference the accident, its aftermath, and any of her claimed physical injuries. Plaintiff must produce Facebook history and photos which relate or show her level of activity after the accident. Pre-accident social media need not be produced without a showing of relevance.
  • Matthews v. J & J Service Solutions, LLC, 2017 WL 2256963 (Mag. M.D. La. May 23, 2017). Plaintiff ordered to comply with document requests for all social media communications with defendant’s current or former employees and for archived Facebook material. Social media is discoverable.

These case have also been added to the cheat sheet itself, where we have collected over 100 favorable ediscovery for defendant cases that go back over a decade.