Now we’ve read it, and before we go off to celebrate (and maybe to look for new jobs as IP lawyers – that’s a joke, folks), we thought we’d tell our readers why that’s exactly what we’re doing.
The 7-1 Riegel decision definitively demolishes a lot of the arguments we’ve been seeing for years (if
Riegel Decided – A Win For MDA Preemption
We’ve just received a copy of the Supreme Court’s decision in Riegel v. Medtronic. Here’s a copy. We haven’t even read it all yet, but it’s looking like a big win for preemption. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion for 7 Justices. Justice Stevens concurred and Justice Ginsburg dissented. The PMA process sets “requirements” within
More From Tulane: Judge Jack On Silicosis
One panel at the Tulane MDL Symposium consisted of the triumvirate of Judges Mark Davidson, Carol Higbee, and Janis Jack.
Judge Davidson handles the Texas statewide asbestos proceedings; his was an interesting talk, but this blog doesn’t worry too much about asbestos. We learned two things of broader interest that we’ll share.
First, the chair
Federal Jurisdiction Over Attorney General Cases (Zyprexa)
Someone at Pepper Hamilton wanted to send a copy of a recent Zyprexa decision to a reporter at The New York Times. But somehow the e-mail was misdirected to us instead.
(We thought that was funny. You guys at Pepper Hamilton have no sense of humor at all.)
One way or another, we
A Report From The Tulane MDL Symposium
One of us just returned from the Tulane Law Review’s symposium on “The Problem of Multidistrict Litigation.” The Review did itself proud, with an impressive group of speakers presenting to a large crowd. We’re now flipping through our notes to see what’s worth reporting.
Since the symposium focused on multidistrict litigation, we’ll start with the
Comment on E-Discovery for Defendants
There must be some problem with our comment function, because we received an email from a reader that the comment quoted below wouldn’t post. We apologize for that, but (being Luddites) all we know how to do is put it up as a post. Here’s the comment:
Wouldn’t such a request be objectionable and properly
E-Discovery For Defendants
Defendants ordinarily hate e-discovery – that is, the discovery of electronically stored information. It’s horrendously expensive (courts almost always stick defendants with the lion’s share of the cost), the amount of data involved in big cases can be overwhelming, and there are so many nooks and crannies that it’s terribly easy to screw it up.
The Proposed ALI Aggregate Settlement Rule
We’ve been thinking again about the American Law Institute’s “Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation,” in part because we’ll be asked to vote on whether to accept the draft at the ALI’s annual meeting in May.
The draft is long and says many things.
One thing that it says, however, is this:
To facilitate
In California, A Four-Letter Word Beginning With “F”
Fish.
Well, not exactly.
In reading and actually thinking about yesterday’s Farm Raised Salmon decision (now published at 42 Cal. 4th 1077; 175 P.3d 1170) from the California Supreme Court, the operative four-letter word is “food.”
“Food” is what puts the “F” in the FDCA – not federal – and that seems to be the
More on Aggregate Litigation in the U.K.
Professor Rachael Mulheron, a law professor at Queen Mary University of London, has prepared a long research paper for the Civil Justice Council assessing the need to reform the “collective redress” tools available under English law.
The paper concludes that the U.K. should make certain reforms, but that it should not adopt American-style class action