Today we welcome our first guest post that’s not from somebody affiliated with one or the other of our firms. He’s Adam M. Masin, a senior associate with Reed Smith LLP. Adam is in Reed Smith’s Philadelphia office and – no big surprise – he’s a member of Reed Smith’s Products Liability Group, resident
Under Daubert, what’s the persuasive value of one case report in a scientific journal or one investigator’s assessment that an adverse event in a clinical trial was “definitely” related to taking the drug?
Essentially nothing, right?
One stray assessment is not statistically significant. It has not been reproduced. It has no known error rate.
How many times have we heard that, in deciding preemption issues the “purpose” or “intent” of congress is the “ultimate touchstone” that the courts must respect? Lots. We can start with Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470 (1996), the express preemption case involving medical devices and the Medical Device Amendments to the FDCA:
One of your humble scribes (Herrmann) has just returned from a couple of weeks in Benton, Illinois, trying a case in which plaintiff alleged that her husband’s ingestion of a prescription antidepressant caused him to commit suicide.
Plaintiff’s counsel was Andy Vickery, of Houston, who has tried two of the three previous antidepressant suicide cases
This guest post was written by Sean P. Costello. Mr. Costello is an associate resident in the Atlanta office of Jones Day. This post is entirely his work. It, of course, represents only his views, and not the views of his clients or firm:
A couple of weeks ago, I guest posted about
We’re so used to adverse decisions out of the District of Minnesota – what with the defibrillator MDLs “distinguishing” Buckman into near oblivion, and the heart valve MDL persisting in certifying classes despite being told not to by the Eighth Circuit – that good news from that district is like a breath of fresh air.
This guest post was written by Pearson N. Bownas. Mr. Bownas is an associate resident in the Cleveland office of Jones Day. This post is entirely his work. It, of course, represents only his views, and not the views of his clients or firm:
Back in February, this blog discussed an article that
Some time ago we posted critically about an ALI Restatement proposal (since tentatively adopted over our, or at least, Bexis,’ vocal objections) that would abolish the requirement that expert witnesses hold their opinions to a reasonable degree of professional certainty. Not long after that we became aware that the folks over at Blog 702 thought
This guest post was written by Sean P. Costello. Mr. Costello is an associate resident in the Atlanta office of Jones Day. This post is entirely his work. It, of course, represents only his views, and not the views of his clients or firm:
Last September, the Federal Judicial Center issued its “Second
We’ve already deplored the recent decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court rejecting the learned intermediary rule outright, State ex rel. Johnson & Johnson Corp. v. Karl, ___ S.E.2d ___, 2007 W. Va. Lexis 57 (W. Va. June 27, 2007) (“Karl”). However, the more we’ve thought about it, the more we’re convinced