Talk to any realtor and they’ll tell you location is the key to any home search. And normally when we rail against litigation tourists, location is pretty key to us too. Plaintiffs can’t forum shop for “judicial hellholes” that have no relation to them or to the defendant. So, you’ve probably heard us say plaintiffs
Massachusetts Sends Litigation Tourist Packing
What happens when a plaintiff from Kentucky sues a New York company in Massachusetts? The case gets tossed for lack of personal jurisdiction. That is exactly what happened in Kingston v. Angiodynamics, Inc., 2021 WL 3022320 (D. Mass. Jul. 16, 2021). It is what should have happened in Hammons v. Ethicon, Inc., 240
Defendant Wins Summary Judgment Battle in Louisiana
We’ve used the term one-two punch to refer to a couple different situations – Daubert wins followed by the grant of summary judgment; Mensing preemption for generic manufacturers and no innovator liability for brand manufacturers. And we’re going to dust it off again today to refer to Couturier v. Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc., —
Lack of Causation Fells Third-Payor Claims in Xarelto MDL
The Xarelto personal injury claims settled in 2019 after six bellwether trials all ended with defense verdicts. What remained, until now, were several third-party payor (health insurers, “TPPs”) actions that have been dormant for almost six years. Despite the passage of time, the motions before the court in 2021 were to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(6)
Learned Intermediary and Alternative Design Causation Knock Out Claims in Texas
Today’s case was decided back on April 23rd, but just showed up on our radar. That made us look back to see first what we were posting about on that date (answer: Lone Pine) and second, what was the world talking about on that date (answer: Chauvin guilty verdict, surging Covid-19 cases in
MDLs Are Not Vegas – What Happens There Does Not Stay There
Lots of cases get parked in MDLs. There is no denying it. It’s built into the system. Individual cases get brought together in a single court for the purpose of consolidated pretrial proceedings. For the most part, except for cases selected as bellwethers, that means MDLs are focused on general discovery, general experts, and general
Door Still Shut to Parallel Violation Claims in Florida
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Today’s case – Bernasek v. Gatz, 2021 WL 2152968 (Fla. Cir. May 20, 2021) – doesn’t exactly break new ground. But it does support that all of the federal courts to rule on parallel violation claims under Florida law are getting it right.
Thorny Questions Raised by Lanham Act Claim Better Left to FDA
It’s a Sunday night after an incredibly jam-packed weekend of activities. The family, mother, father and two teens, decide to end the weekend with a movie. A nice wind down before another hectic week begins. A few minutes in, the father remarks: don’t I know that actress from something else? To which mother offers –
If It Walks and Talks Like a Duck . . .
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Shouldn’t you call it a duck? Apparently not in New Jersey. Primarily because New Jersey is still governed by one of our Bottom Ten decisions of 2012 — Cornett v. Johnson & Johnson, 48 A.3d 1041 (N.J. 2012). Today’s ducky decision was handed
Sloppy is as Sloppy Does
None of us are perfect. Briefs get filed with typos. Letters go out mis-dated. It happens. Emailing and texting are prone to informality, abbreviations, and let’s face it, bad grammar, that should be guarded against creeping into professional writing. Above all else, there is the potential pitfall of the “cut and paste.” Afterall, who wants