Federal law regulates medical devices differently from pharmaceuticals, and branded drugs differently from generic drugs. Whether a particular state-law tort claim is preempted often depends on whether the claim involves a medical device, a branded drug, or a generic drug. Often but not always. As today’s case illustrates, there is one implied-preemption principle that applies
Judge Burroughs up in Boston recently wrote a clear and correct opinion regarding corporate citizenship, principal place of business, personal jurisdiction, and jurisdictional discovery. She was short and to the point, and we will try to be so as well.
The case is Lopez v. Angiodynamics, Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 208161 (D. Mass. Oct.
In general, people do not like to have to repeat themselves. It is unavoidable. Sometimes your audience is rightfully (or wrongfully) distracted. Sometimes you aren’t that clear. Sometimes you lose your zoom audio connection and have to start over. Sometimes you don’t notice your daughter’s earbuds are in and that she’s been watching a YouTube
LinkedIn has become one of the preferred ways of corporate communication. Our own firm encourages us to maintain LinkedIn profiles and use them as a way of networking with clients and potential clients. That’s all well and good. But as with all public social media platforms, users – particularly corporate users – need to be
The complaint in Robinson v. Ethicon Inc., Action No. H-20-3760 (S.D. Tex.) was filed in 2013. To put that in perspective, Amazon’s first Alexa-enabled device, the Echo, wasn’t on the market. There’s a good chance you weren’t running your phone on 4G yet. And, if you were using earbuds with your phone, you were
Plaintiffs like to file complaints that join multiple plaintiffs in a single action. They think that doing so gives them added leverage in settlement discussions. They think that because they know that if they get to a jury, a jury is—no matter the evidence—more likely to find in favor of the plaintiffs and against the
There has been a veritable pandemic of posts about Covid-19 regulations (vaccine mandates, restrictions on indoor gatherings, etc.) on the DDL blog as of late, so we thought we’d take a break from the craziness and report on a good, old-fashioned medical device preemption case. And yet we still found ourselves encountering a loathsome disease
We’ve seen many plaintiffs allege that drug and/or medical device manufacturers committed “fraud on the FDA” and bemoan that Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee, 531 U.S. 341 (2001), prevents them from recovering based on such allegations. Buckman still doesn’t prevent them from trying every form of evasive legal chicanery known to man to
Here’s something we’ve never seen before in a mass tort MDL. In In re Zostavax (Zoster Vaccine Live) Products Liability Litigation, 2021 WL 3375941 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 3, 2021), two former MDL plaintiffs who had suffered summary judgment against their claims were allowed to rejoin the MDL – to assert legal malpractice claims against
With November representing the 18th month of socially distanced litigation, we thought we’d take a look at what courts have said about remote (usually Zoom) depositions. Like it or not, we think they’re here to stay.
Yes/No
The first question is whether or not to have them. Can one side impose them unilaterally?
The answer