The plaintiff in Salinero v. Johnson & Johnson, __ F.3d __, No. 20-10900, 2021 WL 1681237 (11th Cir. Apr. 29, 2021), tried a new twist to get around the learned intermediary rule—and it did not work. The district court rejected the plaintiff’s attempt to graft a “financial bias” exception onto Florida’s learned intermediary rule,
Lone Pine Orders Alive and Well in Third Circuit; Enforcement? Not So Much
We have long endorsed the use of Lone Pine orders as a partial antidote to wasteful mass litigation. The issue is the numbers, large numbers of meritless claims that are parked in a mass proceeding, such as an MDL, where they both strain judicial resources and detract from litigation of claims that have arguable merit.
Right on Warnings in Texas, Not So Much on the Rest
Sometimes a case has one bright shining point floating in a sea of not-so-good ones, or a stand-out result lost among outcomes that should have gone the other way. That describes Isaac v. C.R. Bard, Inc., No. A-19-CV-895, 2021 WL 1177882 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 29, 2021), a case remanded from the Bard IVC filter
That Protective Order Has Teeth
Are protective orders worth the paper they are written on? We have heard cynical attorneys pose that question, usually in a rhetorical fashion. But our view has always been that protective orders—which we define here as court orders entered to protect against the disclosure of confidential information—are important and ought to be followed. This view
The BAAA – A Powerful Punch in Sheep’s Clothing
Joinder Denied: Same Device But Still Too Different
Have you ever gone to a party and felt unwelcome? Neither have we, but the moving party in Bartis v. Biomet, Inc., No. 4:13-cv-00657, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21048 (E.D. Mo. Feb. 4, 2021), sure must have felt that way. She tried to join and intervene in a consolidated set of prosthetic hip-related lawsuits
Online Reviews Are Not “Newly Acquired Evidence”
We have blogged about class actions; we have blogged about preemption; we have blogged about social media; we have blogged about alleged economic loss; and we have blogged about alleged product defects—endlessly. Rarely, however, have we blogged on all of these topics in a single post.
Today is the day, and the topic is an
Preemption Perfection
Sometimes we write on issues for peculiar reasons. Today, for example, a case on a certain topic caught our eye because of its catchy name: Clark v. Perfect Bar. So many questions arise from this concise, yet provocative tag. Did the owner of the 100-year-old brand Clark Bar get sideways with a modern upstart
Sales Representative Fraudulently Joined In Illinois
Plaintiffs often prefer to be in state court, and when we first started doing a lot of product liability litigation way back when, we were struck by how much time and effort plaintiffs spent trying to evade federal jurisdiction and litigating motions to remand to state court. We don’t wonder so much anymore. Jaded, we
No Innovator Liability, No Personal Jurisdiction Either in Idaho
We have an update today on a case from Idaho on which we blogged late last year. The issue then was innovator liability, and we gave our enthusiastic stamp of approval to the court’s rejection of “product liability” where the innovator manufacturer neither made nor sold the product that allegedly harmed the plaintiff. As the