As many of the Blog’s authors and readers wake up today, they will be in New York for the ACI Drug and Medical Device Litigation Conference. Clearly, the choice of venue matters when it comes to a conference. It also matters to plaintiff lawyers and the medical product manufacturers that they sue. The infamous
Unreliable Specific Causation Opinions Take Down Valsartan Bellwether
Back in April, we pondered whether the new judge in the Valsartan MDL would change things for the better. In contrast to the Zantac MDL, which was established a year later and has proceeded on a very similar contamination theory, the first several years of the Valsartan MDL saw a bunch of bad rulings on
Fourth Circuit Revives Problematic Public Nuisance Claim
This post is from the non-Dechert and non-RS side of the Blog.
Depending on the time, issue, and players, the supposed epithets of “judicial activism” or “activist judge” can be thrown in just about every juridical direction. If we were to try to parse out the most common reason for the use of these terms
State AG Action On Electronic Cigarettes Impliedly Preempted
We start with some disclaimers. Not the usual disclaimers about which of the Blog authors’ respective firms deny responsibility for the post. We disclaim that we care much about the availability of cigarettes and vaping products, except insofar as litigation over them says something about litigation over medical products and the general interplay between state
Still Preempting OTC Drug Claims Over Alleged Contamination
Not too long ago, we tried to extrapolate from a doctoral thesis on quantum dots to lessons for litigation. That “[q]uantum dots are between one-billionth of a meter and one-hundred-millionth of a meter in size” emphasized that “appreciating the scope and scale of what is being discussed can be critical.” In the spate of litigation
New California Ranitidine Litigation Order Makes A Huge Mess Of Everything
This is from the non-RS side of the Blog.
We admit that the use of “everything” in our title may be excessive. The order in In re Rantidine [sic] Cases, JCCP 5150 (Cal. Super. Ct. Sept. 15, 2025) (“Cali Ranitidine”), slip op. here, did not cause climate change, poverty, hunger, air
The Fourth Circuit Rejects Attempts To Avoid And Invalidate The Vaccine Act
As we have riffed on before, staying apolitical when discussing the science and law implicated by our posts can be harder than one might expect. That has become increasingly true with regard to litigation over alleged injuries from vaccines, to say nothing of vaccine mandates for public health. It was not terribly
Design Defect Claims Preempted In GLP-1 MDL
The day before this post went live there was a retirement ceremony for Judge Jon P. McCalla, the federal district judge for whom we clerked three decades ago. After serving as an Army officer in the Vietnam War, Judge McCalla got his J.D. from Vanderbilt and clerked for Judge Bailey Brown of the Western District
FNC Dismissal Of A Case With A Foreign Plaintiff Reversed On Appeal
In law school, many students struggle with the distinctions between personal jurisdiction, venue, and forum non conveniens (aka, FNC). In the real world of product liability, FNC is definitely viewed as a less effective tool in the defense litigation toolbox than the other two. Part of the reason is that the showing required for a
Proponents Of Expert Opinion Testimony Bear The Burden To Establish Admissibility, Right?
This is from the non-Butler Snow side of the Blog.
Readers of the Blog know that we believe in strictly applying the requirements of Federal Rules of Evidence 702 and 703. Long before the 2023 amendments to Rule 702 were a twinkle in the advisory committee’s collective eye, we were pounding the proverbial drum that