The last time we wrote about vaccines, we received a lot of emails. Vaccines are a hot-button issue for some, although we firmly believe they should not be. Vaccines have prevented disease in millions and millions of people and are among the most important public health developments of all time.
When we wrote that
We have become accustomed to doing things remotely these days. Depositions, court appearances, mediations, conferences, celebrations and family gatherings of all kinds. The variety of activities that we now do by videoconference pales only by comparison to the speed with which we adapted to this new normal. We will refrain from opining on whether we
We don’t know much, but there are a few things we know for sure. One is that when a topic is complex and not within the knowledge of an ordinary lay person, you generally need an expert. A second is that determining the medical cause of a disease is almost always complex and not within
No good deed goes unpunished. One of our very first cases was a pro bono case for the Red Cross following a Northern California earthquake. The Red Cross gave a local homeowner money to repair her home. It was a gift. No strings attached. Please, take our money and fix your house. Live long and
We offer a different take on preemption today. We have discussed on any number of occasions how the FDA’s regulation of drug warnings preempts (or should preempt) state-law tort claims purporting to impose different or additional warnings. But what if the alleged state-law duty is based on a public referendum or statute? Does that make
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,
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.
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
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