We extend a welcome to the blogosphere to Medical Devices: Law, Trends, and Oddities, a new blog hosted by Michael Shalhoub of Goldberg Segalla.
Although Michael just launched the blog, his approach seems to be a little different from ours. With rare exceptions, we don’t try to cover breaking news at the Drug and Device
One of your humble scribes, Herrmann, will be speaking at the ACI Drug and Medical Device Litigation Conference (on the topic of multidistrict litigation) in New York City later this week. If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, please do say hello.
Herrmann will also be giving a one-hour webinar on drug and device
Michael Imbroscio, of Covington & Burling, attended the oral argument today in the Colacicco/McNellis appeal in the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. He just sent us this report describing the argument. Your dynamic blogging duo had nothing to do with this report; it’s entirely Mike’s work, for which we thank him:
In a packed
We posted a couple of weeks ago about a new hedge fund that would be investing $100 million to fund litigation in the U.K.
Today, the English legal paper The Lawyer reports that the law firm of Herbert Smith is moving ahead to find outside funding for a litigation matter.
Although neither of us could attend, we’ve now received a first report about the Colacicco/McNellis argument in the Third Circuit this morning.
The parties argued before a packed house; the argument ran for over two hours; at the conclusion, the panel ordered the preparation of a transcript, so investors would have access to the proceedings.
We’ve previously noted the brewing issue about whether plaintiffs improperly use the rules governing “related cases” to cause cases to be assigned to judges the plaintiffs prefer.
Point of Law has another post on the issue, citing to a couple of precedents.
We still cannot speak on this issue. We’re just watching with interest.
There’s never been a more interesting time to be a drug and device defense lawyer; this field is hopping. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in two preemption cases, and a third, even bigger, issue is in the pipeline. This is the Supreme Court’s preemption trilogy, in chronological order:
Riegel v. Medtronic
On Tuesday, December
Public Citizen often appears in opposition to conflict preemption in drug cases. That’s their right. One of our number, Bexis, does the same thing on the defense side for PLAC. But Public Citizen goes farther, and actually assumes representation of plaintiffs on appeal. That’s why Public Citizen was arguing the plaintiff’s side of Riegel v.
We’ve had a couple of requests for a post about the Fifth Circuit argument on Monday in Ackermann v. Wyeth.
Since one of your humble scribes — Herrmann — argued the case, this is a delicate matter.
We’ll report only what any person sitting in the courtroom would have seen: The panel consisted of
We were too busy – and none of our clients would pay for it in any event – so we didn’t attend yesterday’s Supreme Court oral argument in Riegel v. Medtronic. But fortunately for us, and by extension all of you reading this, one of our old friends (and a dedicated reader) was there