What follows is a guest post from long-time friend of the blog Thomas J. Hurney, Jr. of Jackson Kelly PLLC in Charleston, West Virginia. Tom comes to us today with news of an interesting – and favorable – federal court remand denial in one of the recently filed opioid litigation in his state. It raises
A Sometimes Overlooked Fact About Express Warranty
The warranty is “express.”
Before you say, “Well, duh,” this sometimes actually does matter. Here’s how.
Most complaints in product liability actions involving prescription medical products that include express warranty counts do so as one of a bunch of different causes of action, all pleaded seriatim (“one after another,” in non-lawyer speak). Believe it or
Boxed Warnings and Adequacy as a Matter of Law
One of the (many) things that made last year’s decision in Barron v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc., ___ S.W.3d ___, 2016 WL 6596091 (Mo. App. Nov. 8, 2016), so hideous that it weighed in at #3 of our worst decisions of the year was that, virtually without discussion, it held that an FDA-approved black box
A Double Whammy for California Design Defect Claims
Finally, some good news out of California – at least when personal jurisdiction isn’t the issue.
Design and warning defects were the questions presented in Trejo v. Johnson & Johnson, ___ Cal. Rptr.3d ___, 2017 WL 2825803 (Cal. App. June 30, 2017), and the result, particularly on the design side, was much more to
Both Sides Equal Under the First Amendment
There’s a problem with attorney advertising in the prescription medical product space – but it’s not the one you normally hear us defense-side litigators kvetching about. Quite apart from its litigation-generating effects, attorney advertising can have adverse public health consequences when all the anti-pharma hyperbole causes patients to cease taking targeted products in violation of
Failure To Contraindicate Claims and Preemption
We were recently asked the question, “are failure to contraindicate claims preempted?” Our immediate response was, “How could they not be”? However, it’s not helpful to answer a question with a question, and as with all things preemption, matters are not as simple as they might seem. Therefore, we thought we’d explore this issue in
Breaking News − Bristol-Myers Squibb Slams The Door On Litigation Tourism
The Supreme Court decided “the big one” today – and not to keep anyone in suspense [the big one is a major earthquake in California mass tort litigation], the result is that the California Supreme Court finding of personal jurisdiction despite neither the plaintiff nor the defendant residing in the state has been reversed. Here
Fourth Circuit Punts West Virginia Innovator Liability Issue
We have two posts on innovator liability that we update on a consistent basis: our innovator liability scorecard, and our “Innovator Liability at 100” state-by-state collection of materials that we originally compiled when the one-hundredth judicial opinion on this topic was decided. Well, not too long ago the Fourth Circuit, in McNair
Latest Updates To Ediscovery for Defendants Cheat Sheet
This is our quasi-annual update to our cheat sheet about ediscovery for defendants. Essentially that means using discovery to obtain access to what plaintiffs have said about themselves, and their supposed injuries, on social media. Such material can be critical to defeating a plaintiff’s case. See Zamudio-Soto v. Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2017 WL
Guest Post – Supreme Court Resolves Longstanding Hague Convention Service Issue
This guest post comes courtesy of Jonathan Hoffman, a Senior Partner at MB Law Group LLP, in Portland, Oregon. Jon, a long-time member of the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”), originally circulated a version of this post to PLAC members. Bexis, also a long-time PLAC member, saw it, thought blog readers would be