Johnny Cash sang about ghost riders in the sky. In a federal courtroom in Las Vegas earlier this month, we got the litigation version: ghost writers in the sky — specifically, in three different expert reports that all somehow said the same thing in the same words about the same data, from experts in different
The Bonus Track Survives; PMA Preemption Cuts the Rest
Every so often, the song nobody wanted turns out to be the one that lasts. Radiohead almost left “Creep” off their debut album because the band itself was embarrassed by it; it became their defining hit. Prince wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U” and gave it away as album filler for a side project he was
A TwIqbal Decision Even John Denver Could Get Behind
Last week this blogger was in Morgantown for a sophomore daughter and a Mountaineers game. This week it was Harrisonburg, Virginia, for the last parent weekend with our senior son at James Madison University. The weather did not cooperate nearly as well as it did in West Virginia, but the football did not disappoint. JMU
Country Roads and Curious Pleading Standards
This blogger spent the weekend in Morgantown, and West Virginia did everything right except the football score. The leaves were doing their early turn, that first crisp snap was in the air, and the drive in on 68 delivered exactly the scenery you hope for — ridge after ridge of Appalachian foothills rolling out in
Let the Science Do the Science – S.D.N.Y Torches Every Benzene Theory in OTC Acne MDL
We’ve written a lot of benzene posts on this blog over the years, and most of them share a common thread. Plaintiffs find a chemical decomposition byproduct nobody put on a label, dress it up as a corporate conspiracy, and ask a court to do what years of FDA rulemaking declined to do. Every so
When Plaintiff’s Experts Ghost Their Own Depositions
This case is from the non-Butler Snow side of the blog.
It’s a relatively new term (at least for us Gen Xers) – but we have all been ghosted. A second date that never gets confirmed. A contractor who quotes the job and then vanishes. A group text that just stops. It stings, but usually
You Are What You Implant — The Vegan Shoulder that Wasn’t
There is a certain kind of plaintiff’s theory that reads like it wandered in from a wellness blog rather than a products liability treatise. Today’s case is one of them. A plaintiff who eats vegan for medical reasons sues a device manufacturer because nobody warned her, personally, that the implant going into her shoulder had
Tort Hierarchy in Reverse?
Every law student learns the same tidy hierarchy on day one of Torts. Negligence is harder to prove than strict liability, because strict liability does not require showing the defendant did anything wrong, only that the product itself was defective. And recklessness is harder still than negligence, reserved for conduct that goes well beyond a
Frozen Assets — E.D. Pa. Refuses to Let a Qui Tam Relator Turn a Shipping Glitch into a Fraud Verdict
We have all had the experience of ordering something online, watching the delivery truck icon crawl across the map for three days, and then opening the box to find everything is exactly fine. No harm, no foul, just a mildly stressful shipping odyssey. Now imagine a plaintiff’s lawyer showing up at your door insisting that
Home Field Advantage: How Connecticut Made it Easier to Plead a Filshie Clip Case
Every sport has that one venue where the home team gets every close call. Fenway in the late 2010s. Lambeau Field in a January snowstorm. Or, if you are a Baltimore Orioles fan — Yankee Stadium in Game 1 of the 1996 American League Championship Series, where a twelve-year-old kid with a glove reached over