Photo of Bexis

JAMES M. BECK is Reed Smith's only Senior Life Sciences Policy Analyst, resident in the firm's Philadelphia office. He is the author of, among other things, Drug and Medical Device Product Liability Handbook (2004) (with Anthony Vale). He wrote the seminal law review article on off-label use cited by the Supreme Court in Buckman v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee. He has written more amicus briefs for the Product Liability Advisory Council than anyone else in the history of the organization, and in 2011 won PLAC's highest honor, the John P. Raleigh award. He has been a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) since 2005. He is the long-time editor of the newsletter of the ABA's Mass Torts Committee.  He is vice chair of the Class Actions and Multi-Plaintiff Litigation SLG of DRI's Drug and Device Committee.  He can be reached at jmbeck@reedsmith.com.  His LinkedIn page is here.

To all in-house counsel working in the pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech, and digital health industries: if you can use a few CLE hours, we invite you to attend Reed Smith’s annual Virtual Health Care Week, taking place from March 16 through March 19, 2026.

This four-day all-remote event will explore recent developments, challenges, and opportunities

At the recent ACI Drug and Medical Device annual conference, Bexis created something of a stir by broaching the subject of litigation discovery into the “prompts” that are typically used to create output from generative artificial intelligence.  A fair number of the attendees apparently had not considered that possibility.  Well, it’s already being done, and

We’ve only discussed Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P.A. v. Allstate Insurance  Co., 559 U.S. 393 (2010), a couple of times.  Shady Grove, displaced – in federal court – a variety of state-law limitations on class actions because those restrictions were at odds with Fed. R. Civ. P. 23, and in federal

It’s now been about two-and-a-half years since the Supreme Court sided with forum-shopping plaintiffs in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023).  Mallory was, in places 5-4, and elsewhere 4-1-4, and everywhere extremely fact specific – to the point of including a defendant-specific image of its Pennsylvania contacts.  600 U.S. at

Since it was published in 2011, the third edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual for Scientific Evidence has been the go-to guide for federal judges seeking to sort out scientific testimony, and a major source of non-precedential authority for both sides when arguing motions under Fed. R. Evid. 702.  2011, however, was fifteen