One day last week, we were sitting at our computer watching a torrential rainstorm through the windows of our home office. It occurred to us, based on some recent seepage, that we should check our basement. We opened the door to the most-unwelcome sound of rushing water. Momentarily confused, we identified the source: a new
We’ve been watching the evolution of the Supreme Court’s thinking on First Amendment review of “speaker” and “content” specific prior restraints since we first noticed that emerging doctrine in the pharmaceutical detailing case, Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011). In Sorrell, however, it was unclear how much (if any) more
Administrative law is having a moment. Next year is the 75th anniversary of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). We have mixed feelings about attending the party. The games will be saddled with unclear and unevenly applied rules. Instead of goody bags, we will be forced to disgorge treasure on the way out. But if there
Plaintiffs’ experts do a lot of stupid things. We’ve dedicated whole posts to them – here and here, for example. Now we have another trick to add to their growing list of shenanigans – plaintiffs’ experts turn FCA relators. That’s right, two of plaintiffs’ experts from the DePuy Orthopedics hip implant litigation are trying
Bexis has been an active member of the American Law Institute (“ALI”), particularly concerning the ALI’s ongoing projects involving the Third Restatement of Torts. Thus, regular blog subscribers have read about his adventures attempting to dissuade the law professors who draft these projects from pursuing their natural biases towards always increasing liability (more liability =
In the ever-extending period of working from home and social distancing, we have spent some time watching various exemplars of the “superhero” genre and noted that the uber kitschy afterschool and weekend morning staple of our youth is not being recreated. (If Stevie Mac is from the Pleistocene, then our youth was in the
The recent decision in Mize v. Mentor Worldwide LLC, ___ Cal. Rptr.3d ___, 2020 WL 3602482 (Cal. App. July 2, 2020), demonstrates why California courts – particularly state courts – have such a poor reputation when it comes to product-related litigation. In Mize, a combination of questionable reasoning, together with the state’s absurdly
Back in the Pleistocene era when we toiled in law school, it seemed as if modern tort law developed as the result of a cross-continental game of ping pong played between the California and New Jersey courts. That still seems to be the case. Sure, there is the occasional, horrific verdict in flyover country that
We haven’t see too many of these. The reason for that is the gadolinium litigation is practically a textbook example of where federal law ought to preempt state-law product liability claims of all kinds—including both design defect claims and failure-to-warn claims. Just search gadolinium on the blog and you’ll find plenty of cases dismissed on
On many occasions, we’ve remarked that in modern prescription medical product liability litigation MDLs, the main objective of both plaintiffs and their counsel is to file as many lawsuits as possible, and then to do the bare minimum possible to avoid dismissal. The idea is to run up the numbers, make the defendants spend huge