It is time, once again, to talk about Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) case management. But this time there will be more gratitude than grousing.
We wince when we hear judges talk about managing litigation. Such management seems to be about many things (mostly about forcing settlement), and not much about deciding legal issues, and definitely not
We have a case going on where the plaintiff wants to preclude the use of a term found in his medical records to describe something that happened to him in the past that is highly relevant to the claims and injuries in the case. Instead of using the actual term, which was also used in
A California appellate court has ruled that California’s mandatory trial preference statute is not always mandatory, an opinion that gives courts and defendants a slight bit of breathing room in an otherwise unforgiving space. Every practitioner in the product liability space has encountered California’s trial preference statute, Civil Procedure Code Section 36. That is the
We would have to dig deep to find a drug or device MDL that did not involve some form of plaintiff fact sheet or profile form. The idea behind such a discovery vehicle is that while case specific discovery lags behind general discovery, defendants are entitled to certain basic information about plaintiffs and their claims
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.
We’ve all seen the signs – No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service. Their exact origin may be unknown but these signs appear to have come to popularity in the 1960s and 1970s as a response by businesses to keep “long-haired hippies” out of stores and restaurants. Or maybe they were there before that but just
We made a statement in our recent Age of Reptiles post concerning the decision, Fitzpatrick v. Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, ___ N.E.3d ___, 2019 WL 5792847 (Mass. App. Nov. 7, 2019), that we had to check. We described Fitzpatrick as “the first appellate case we know of that has specifically addressed and declared certain
You’ve heard the saying – you can run, but you can’t hide. Well, in Multidistrict Litigation, we could have a saying – you can hide, but only until remand. It’s no secret that in most mass torts, only a handful of cases are in the spotlight. The bellwethers. The intention, usually by all parties
MDLs are complicated. MDLs are chaotic, messy, and ugly unless they have structure and order. Bringing order to chaos. Something this blogger has championed for what’s starting to be more years than she wants to readily discuss. But without order, think of The Blob (the original 1958, Steve McQueen flick). It creeps. It crawls. It
Bexis has lots of opinions on what’s wrong with mass-tort (especially drug/device) MDLs. Heck, Bexis has even proposed amendments to the MDL statutes to correct the many severe problems that exist. Now, Congress has before it possible statutory changes (not holding our breath) and Civil Rules Committee is looking into the same problems. Maybe something