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In the last couple of years we have gone to plenty of Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) court conferences.  We’ve also gone to plenty of bench-bar conferences about MDLs. From the defense point of view, the key issues are early vetting of cases, even-handed discovery, and avoidance of bellwether trials where the deck is stacked in favor

Last week we read a couple of online articles, including in the ABA Journal, about the unique questioning style of United States Senator John Kennedy (R- Louisiana) when it comes to federal judicial nominees. 

By now, we all know how judicial  nominees do the usual dance of saying as little as possible. Understandably, they decline to

Back in 1997, a Chicago Tribune columnist wrote a hypothetical commencement speech that garnered a lot of attention. Like most commencement speeches, it offered uplifting advice to the bright young minds about to enter the working world. Unlike most, it directed the graduates to wear sunscreen.  That suggestion (often wrongly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) became

Happy Valentine’s Day. To celebrate, we will discuss a court decision that we love.

Preemption and the Ohio Product Liability Act (OPLA) are two of the best friends a drug/device defense lawyer has.  Both show up in Groeschen v. Alcon Laboratories, Inc., 2024 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 2 (Ohio Ct. Comm. Pleas Feb. 2, 2024). As

Law school exams are usually exercises in issue spotting. Buried within the fact scenarios are various legal issues. The student earns points by identifying those issues and discussing how they should be resolved.  Sequence also matters.  It makes sense to walk through threshold issues, such as jurisdiction, first. 

Goins v. Saint Elizabeth Medical Center, Inc.

We’ve pointed out several times recently (and will be pointing out in an ACI presentation today) that cases against over the counter (OTC) drugs are on the uptick. Why?  Here’s our theory: there are lots of OTC consumers, hence lots of potential plaintiffs, and there are no pesky learned intermediaries, which means that plaintiffs can

Two years ago we posted on whether courts could exclude prospective jurors for cause because they weren’t vaccinated.  Not much precedent was then available. 

Now, with United States v. O’Lear, 2024 WL 79971 (6th Cir. Jan. 8, 2024), we get the first published appellate decision on the topic, affirming the exclusion.  (The Ninth Circuit

Our work on “hard goods” (automobile, appliance, fire) product liability cases is greatly outnumbered by our drug and device cases (and probably also outnumbered these days by website privacy cases).  But the history of product liability has often been driven by such hard goods cases.  Think of Cardozo’s famous opinion in MacPherson v. Buick.