We’ve never met Bill Childs, but we like him. He’s an Associate Professor at Western New England School of Law, and he hosts the Torts Prof Blog, where he keeps the content both fresh and informative. We thus read with interest his recent article in the Nebraska Law Review, “The Overlapping Magisteria of
Jane Genova, over at Law and More, exhorts one of your humble scribes — Herrmann — to write a companion book to The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law.
We’re flattered. Really, we are.
Sadly, blogging alone is a full-time job.
Actually, on a moment’s reflection, being a lawyer at Jones Day is, alone, a
A long time ago – blogwise, anyway – we put together a post that described and linked to all the FDA’s amicus curiae briefs that the Agency had filed in favor of preemption in prescription drug and medical device product liability litigation. Several things have happened since then. One of those things was that we
As practically anybody bothering to read this blog knows, a large bipartisan majority of Congress just passed, and the president signed, a new bill that strengthens the FDA. Like just about everybody else, we thought that, overall, what Congress produced was a good idea. It seems that these days all statutes have to have names,
We have received several times over the last few days a blast e-mail from an e-discovery outfit advising us that “litigation hold memos” — the documents instructing employees to preserve all relevant documents once litigation is reasonably anticipated — are protected by the attorney-client privilege.
Here’s the key excerpt from that blast e-mail:
“ARE LITIGATION
We’ve been asked two questions repeatedly since the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Warner-Lambert v. Kent. We’re answering both of them publicly today.
First, we have no idea why the Supreme Court took the case. No one does. (Well, actually, nine people know, but they wear robes, and they’re not talking.)
There are two
We’ve been thinking about how our clients, prescription drug and device manufacturers, could do a better job of promoting diversity – diversity jurisdiction, that is. For you non-lawyers, “diversity” refers here to diversity of citizenship. That in turn depends upon whether the defendants are residents of different states than the plaintiffs. Diversity of citizenship matters
A bunch of law schools have asked the more curmudgeonly of your two scribes — Herrmann — to give “book talks” on campus about his little book, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law. The Curmudge spoke last week at The University of Michigan Law School and has future dates scheduled at Lewis and Clark,
Professor Alexandra Lahav (of Connecticut Law School) has posted on-line an article arguing that bellwether trials are not just a good choice for resolving mass torts (as we previously argued here), but perhaps should be made mandatory.
We haven’t yet read the article in its entirety, but the description over at the Mass Tort
The multidistrict litigation statute is 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1407. (Surely there’s a way to make that little “section” sign on a computer, but it escapes us, so we’re typing “Sec.” That’s us — Beck and Herrmann, the blogging Luddites.)
Anyway, Section 1407 authorizes the MDL Panel to transfer federal cases “to any district for coordinated