Today’s case, Adams v. 3M Company, 2023 WL 2997420 (6th Cir. April 19, 2023), is not, strictly speaking, a drug or device case, but it is about constraining plaintiff lawyer attempts to aggregate litigation. That issue is near and dear to our flinty, defense-hack hearts. We never forego a chance to quote our old
Class Action
California Reaffirms Healthcare Data Privacy Standard And Rejects Class Certification

We have not written much on data privacy lately, but it remains a hot topic and one that changes rapidly as governments around the world (including numerous U.S. states) enact new data privacy laws. One thing that has not changed is the standard for proving a data privacy breach under California’s medical confidentiality statutes. For…
Learned Intermediary — Not an Affirmative Defense in California

Almost a year ago we wrote a post called Learned Intermediary – Not Just for Failure to Warn about a California putative economic loss class action that was dismissed for failing to plead any allegations about whether the drug manufacturer had adequately warned plaintiff’s prescribing physician. Fast forward about 9 months and we posted about…
Judge-Made Law Gets Peeled Back In Bananas Case

When we say “bananas,” today’s case is actually about bananas, that herb people tend to call a fruit. It is also quite unusual and complicated. Because it also involves some tragic underlying events, our quips are done. A bit of etymology is warranted, though. We used the term “judge-made law” in the title and that…
No Alleged Harm, No Leg To Stand On
Valuable Piece on Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) Advanced Removal Strategies – Distributed with Permission

We’re not the font of all legal knowledge; we don’t claim to be. Every now and then we come across material published by our colleagues at other firms defending prescription medical product liability litigation that we think would be valuable to our readers, so we ask if we can republish. That’s how our 50-state survey…
S.D. Ohio Dismisses Zostavax Class Action

Did you know that both LeBron James and Steph Curry were born in Ohio? So were Neil Armstrong, Halle Berry, Simone Biles, Thomas Edison, Dean Martin, Jack Nicklaus, and Steven Spielberg. (We once ran into – we mean literally – Dean Martin as he was launching himself out of a Beverly Hills restaurant. He was…
Prescription Drugs and Class Actions Do Not Mix

Some things were never meant to go together. Oil and water. Ice cream and ketchup. Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort (although fans of the books will quickly point out that Boy Who Lived was actually linked inextricably to his arch enemy). Picnics and honey bees. Elected officials and the power to borrow money. You get…
Supreme Court Holds that the Violation of a Statutory Right Is Insufficient To Establish Article III Standing in a Damages Action
Possibly Off-the-Wall Ideas Triggered by Recent Cases

One of the intriguing things about cases decided by a jurisdiction’s highest court is that pronouncements by such courts can often have far-reaching implications. Sometimes they pan out, as the application of the First Amendment to the FDA’s ban on off-label promotion seems to be doing following Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc., 564 U.S.…