We wrote a post not too long ago recommending that MDL defendants seriously consider limiting so called “Lexecon (read the prior post if you don’t know what that means) waivers” to single plaintiff trials and to exclude punitive damages. We included a caveat that “this idea wouldn’t have worked” in all situations, if the
We have made some technical upgrades to the blog that should help you access our research posts more quickly and efficiently. Now, at the very top of the blog – above even our “Drug and Device Law” caption, you will find several new category titles: Scorecards, General Research, State-By-State Research, and Cheat
We are back in the trenches today after spending a wonderful day in New York with our lifelong best friend, in yet another of the blissfully endless celebrations of the milestone birthday we marked in December. We saw “The Band’s Visit,” a new musical based on a 2007 movie about eight members of an Egyptian
Breaking news. This just in. Prescriber’s testimony linchpin in manufacturer’s victory over failure to warn claims. And the crowd gasped at this startling news. Actually, this news might be more the equivalent of an announcement that a 13 year-old boy made a snarky comment to his parents (current daily experience for this blogger). Not exactly
Today’s guest post by Reed Smith associate Jennifer Eppensteiner concerns an interesting First Amendment development. Everybody knows how California’s wildly overwrought Proposition 65 has turned that state’s products, from beer to bacon, into billboards for remote and scientifically suspect cancer warnings. Well, how about a ruling that requiring scientifically unsound warnings on products is compelled
In Looney v. Moore, 2018 WL 1547260 (11th Circuit Mar. 30, 2018), the Eleventh Circuit confirmed Alabama law’s rejection of an “increased risk of harm causation standard and established that lack of informed consent plaintiffs must have a physical injury.
Looney is a clinical trial case. Parents of several infants who were born
The personal injury decisions Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014), and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), are gifts that keep on giving. The latest development is Wilson v. Nouvag GmbH, 2018 WL 1565602 (N.D. Ill. March 30, 2018), where the plaintiff went to the
This morning, our commuter train was packed with overjoyed Villanova students headed for the NCAA Championship Victory Parade. It was the second time in a few months that our fair city has been lifted by a huge sports triumph. And, though our heads were ringing by the time we reached our stop (“Indoor Voice” is
This is not new. PMA devices should have broad preemption against product liability claims. Not just from the express preemption provisions of the MDA, but from attempts to get around express preemption by basing claims on violations of the FDCA and running smack into implied preemption under Buckman. We have talked about the
We recently read an editorial in The New York Times advocating lawsuits as a means of regulating an industry. Politicians are gripped by paralysis – so the argument goes – thus we must entrust the issue to litigators, smart judges, and good-hearted jurors. After all, hadn’t years of product liability litigation resulted in safer