As our loyal readers know, the Reed Smith side of the blog has been very interested in 3D printing, and particularly in its product liability implications. We recently shared with you the most comprehensive law review article to date on this subject (here) – authored by Bexis and Reed Smith associate (and sometimes guest
Last September we expressed our curiosity over Wisconsin cheese curd and our distaste for an order from the Western District of Wisconsin rejecting implied preemption in an amiodarone case. As we explained then, the district court allowed a claim alleging that the defendants failed to provide medication guides for distribution with amiodarone prescriptions.
The other day, the United States Supreme Court heard argument in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, No. 16-466 (U.S. argued April 25, 2017) (“BMS”) (link to transcript). We’ve blogged many times about the issues in Bristol-Myers-Squibb. In BMS, the United States government, as amicus curiae,
Plaintiff lawyers must be mighty allergic to federal court. They perform all sorts of maneuvers to avoid CAFA removal of mass actions. For example, they will artificially subdivide their cases into groups of under 100. And/or they will disclaim any intent to try the cases together. Do these circumventions work? Perhaps most important, since so
When this blogger hears “negligent undertaking,” my mind does not automatically turn to products liability – but rather to pre-teen children. Pre-teen children are at the age where they are asked (actually required) to “undertake” more and more duties and responsibilities. But often these duties are undertaken in a rather haphazard or lackadaisical way that
We confess, we can’t think of any good reason for admitting evidence concerning product risks that the plaintiff in a particular case never actually encountered – yet plaintiffs try it with a straight face all the time. It’s another example of plaintiffs throwing mud against the wall to see if it will stick; anything to
Charges of discovery abuse get thrown around frequently in product liability litigation. We have not done a scientific survey, but we guess that such charges are levied against the manufacturer defendants more often than against individual plaintiffs. For one thing, seeking burdensome discovery, and then discovery on discovery, has been in the product liability plaintiff
Just yesterday we made the following observation: a design defect claim is often a make-weight claim. How should the design have been improved? Not selling the product at all is hardly a design improvement. An entirely different product is not a safer alternative under the law of any enlightened state. Changing the molecule or the
However a drug/device product liability is styled, it will almost always be focused on a claim of failure to warn. Why do plaintiffs insist on inserting a cause of action for manufacturing liability when there is not a whiff of evidence that anything went wrong on the production line? Seldom do we see the
Today’s guest post is from friend-of-the-blog Sarah Bunce, a partner at Tucker Ellis. It’s about the 8th Circuit finally having before it aspects of the effects of the current, bizarrely applied Missouri joinder and venue rules (see here) on federal jurisdiction. Not only is it about time, though, it may be