For as long as we’ve been practicing law, litigation tourists plaintiffs, from far and wide, have flocked to bring suit in the downstate Illinois counties of Madison and St. Clair, despite their claims having nothing to do with the state of Illinois. Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court – in Essure litigation – recognized that this
Evidence of Nothing Overcomes No Evidence
Bexis has been writing amicus curiae briefs for the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”) for a long time. He was introduced to PLAC by one of the best lawyers he (or anyone, for that matter) ever met, Edward W. “Neddie” Madeira, Jr., who recently passed away. Fare thee well, Neddie, you are missed.
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Of MDL Plaintiff Fact Sheets and Sham Affidavits
This post is neither written nor reviewed by the Dechert side of the Blog.
The recent decision in McLaughlin v. Bayer Essure, Inc., 2020 WL 1625549 (E.D. Pa. April 2, 2020), is massive (28 Westlaw pages) and devoted largely to review of a special master’s determination of individualized statute of limitations issues for some
Guest Post – Primary Jurisdiction- More About That 16th Draft Pick
Here’s another guest post by friend-of-the-blog, Dick Dean of Tucker Ellis. Dick is a big fan of primary jurisdiction (if only more courts shared his enthusiasm), and this post deals with some recent Supreme Court precedent that is helpful to such arguments, and that might otherwise have been missed. As always our guest bloggers
Making It Snappy in New York
There’s a reason plaintiffs hate removal before service – “snap removal.” It has the potential to wreak havoc on their mass tort business models, which are largely based on confronting defendants with as many cases as possible in the worst jurisdictions possible. While federal courts are hardly perfect, they are usually better than the state-court
FDA Nonacquiescence Strategy Fails In Evergreening Case
One of the advantages that the FDA (and other government agencies) have over other litigants is that it gets to ignore court decisions it doesn’t like, in hopes of trying again later in what the Agency considers a more favorable forum. Here’s how one court described the same policy by a different agency:
Understood in
Quasi-Guest Post – Plaintiffs’ Beast of Burden: Adverse Event Reports Precede Causation
We’re calling this a “quasi” guest post because the author, Reed Smith‘s Dean Balaes, is actually trying out to join our blogging team. This is his inaugural post, of what we hope will be many more. This particular post addresses the causation aspects of a case, Gayle v. Pfizer, Inc., ___ F.
On Newly Acquired Information
We’ve noticed quite a few prescription drug preemption decisions lately involving “newly acquired information.” That’s because the Supreme Court doubled down in Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht, 139 S. Ct. 1668 (U.S. 2019), on the boundary of impossibility preemption being set by a defendant’s ability to utilize the FDA’s “changes being effected”
Post-Albrecht Preemption Persistently Pummels Pradaxa Plaintiffs
Not long ago, in our “Post-Albrecht Preemption Pummels Pradaxa Plaintiffs” post we discussed several recent favorable preemption decisions in product liability litigation involving that drug: Ridings v. Maurice, ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2020 WL 1264178 (Mag. W.D. Mo. March 16, 2020), Adkins v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2020 WL 1704646 (Conn.
Preemption and Second-Guessing FDA Classifications
The “fraud on the FDA” claim that the Supreme Court held preempted in Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee, 531 U.S. 341 (2001), was actually the most extreme form of a private plaintiff second-guessing the result of an FDA process classifying a regulated product. Plaintiffs claimed that, because of purported “fraud” in the §510(k)