Here’s what passes for our light reading lately: cases involving plaintiff lawyers griping about their fees. We recently posted about a battle royale among ex-partners in a plaintiff firm. Now we have a Second Circuit opinion where a plaintiff lawyer chafed under fee limitations imposed by Judge Weinstein in the Zyprexa MDL. Mulligan Law Firm
We covered the topic of product recalls being excludable as subsequent remedial measures in some detail in our Total Recall post, including a list of all the cases we were aware of (whether they involved drugs/devices or not) that had excluded recalls for this reason. There wasn’t a single federal court of appeals in the
Just the other day we brought you news that the British medical journal Lancet issued a full retraction of an purported scientific article by a plaintiffs’ expert in autism litigation. The author, who was at the time also serving as a plaintiff-side expert, described parts of his research in a manner that “have been proven to be false.”
Something similar seems to be happening in the Accutane litigation. There’s a new opinion, Palazzolo v. Hoffman-La Roche Inc., No. A-3789-07T3, slip op. (N.J. Super. App. Div. Feb. 3, 2010), in which another plaintiff’s expert has gotten called out for essentially the same thing – publishing an article in a medical journal that failed to accurately describe what was actually done.
Be ready to hold your nose, here’s what went down, and it ain’t pretty:
In Palazzolo the plaintiff’s expert, James Bremner, was hired to offer an opinion that Accutane caused depression and suicide. The sticky situation began when, in the words of the Court, “Plaintiffs paid Bremner to undertake a further study. There is no dispute that the study was commissioned specifically for use in this litigation.” Slip op. at 3. That study – bought and paid for by plaintiffs’ counsel – was nevertheless published at J. Douglas Bremner, M.D., et. al., “Functional Brain Imaging Alterations in Acne Patients Treated With Isotretinoin,” 162 Am. J. Psychiatry 983 (May 2005). Slip op. at 4. You can read the whole thing on line here.
Continue Reading Plaintiffs’ Experts And Peer Review Don’t Mix
What does a smokeless “electronic cigarette” have to do with drugs and medical devices? Well, according to the FDA, an electronic cigarette is a “drug-device combination.” Lately, however, it seems that the Agency’s position has become a strategic misstep. It gave rise to this a recent opinion by Judge Richard Leon, Smoking Everywhere, Inc. v.
The BBC is reporting that the British Medical Journal Lancet has issued a full retraction of the notorious 1998 article that claimed there was an increased risk of autism associated with use of the MMR vaccine. Among the grounds for the retraction: the lead author “was in the pay of solicitors who were acting for
Once upon a time, quite a few years ago, one of us had the pleasure of a having a case before the (late?) Hon. John Dowling of the Dauphin County (Harrisburg, Pa.) Court of Common Pleas. We still remember winning the case on summary judgment – after finishing our argument, the first words out of
Have you ever noticed how you notice the same thing everywhere when you’re thinking about it? If you’re contemplating purchase of a station wagon, you see station wagons all over the place (sort of like the parking lot of a 1970’s Bobby Sherman concert).
We’ve been thinking about ex parte interviews with treating doctors. We’re
Texas, like Michigan, imposes a strong presumption of non-defectiveness on drug labeling approved by the FDA. As to the Michigan statute (which has been around longer), the Sixth Circuit (where Michigan is located) ruled that an exception to the presumption for fraud on the FDA was preempted by Buckman. Garcia v. Wyeth-Ayerst Labs., 385
Over two years ago (have we really been at this so long we can say that?) we wrote a post “Docs for the Goose, Docs for the Gander,” in which we praised Weiss v. Astellas Pharma, US., Inc., 2007 WL 2137782 (E.D. Ky. June 25, 2007), for requiring an even playing field
RICO (the “Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations” statute) is a square hammer that plaintiffs’ lawyers try to force into the round hole of drug and device litigation. So why are we seeing an increase in RICO cases? Well, there’s that whole treble damages and attorney’s fees aspect that makes a RICO claim lucrative, and then there’s