We’re thinking again about Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Iqbal v. Ashcroft, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009).
Today’s thought was prompted by the recent decision granting without prejudice a motion to dismiss in Wright v. General Mills, No. 08cv1532 L(NLS), 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90576 (S.D.Cal. Sept. 30, 2009). Russell
We’ve said before (in commenting on the ALI’s aggregate litigation principles) that we don’t like the “cy pres” concept. For one thing, it makes us look dumb. We’re not even sure how the blasted term’s supposed to be pronounced. If you ask three lawyers, you’re likely to get four possible pronunciations, from “sigh pray” to
It’s only in a statement concurring in a denial of certiorari, but three justices of the Supreme Court – including Justice Kennedy (the prime swing justice on the Court), who wrote it, and new Justice Sotomayor, expressed some interesting thoughts on Due Process the other day. See DTD Enterprises, Inc. v. Wells, ___ S.
Although past history demonstrates the increasing futility of class action certification in pharmaceutical/medical device product liability litigation, the other side still plugs away, most likely for reasons we’ve discussed here.
The latest denial of class certification came in Solo v. Bausch & Lomb, Inc., slip op., where the plaintiffs sought recovery of
New Jersey Vioxx plaintiffs weren’t going to let a little thing like losing in the New Jersey Supreme Court keep them from trying to certify their nationwide consumer fraud class action. But yesterday, Judge Higbee, the trial judge assigned the Vioxx mass tort in New Jersey, saw it differently. She denied class certification for a
Since the Supreme Court handed down Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007), we’ve posted twice – here and here – that we think Williams’ reaffirmation, in the specific context of punitive damages, of defendants’ rights to maintain all available legal defenses sounds the death knell for punitive damages class actions.
The two of us have been practicing law now for a little over 25 years. Bexis graduated law school in 1982 and Herrmann a year later (see our bios – links at the top – for the gory details). At big firms it takes a few years – five at least – before we could
It only took five years and two reversals on appeal, see In re St. Jude Medical, Inc., 425 F.3d 1116, 1119-21 (8th Cir. 2005); In re St. Jude Medical, Inc., 522 F.3d 836 (8th Cir. 2008), but the class action allegations in the St. Jude/Silzone litigation are finally history. The trial court reluctantly
Since we blogged last week about the American Law Institute’s (“ALI”) imminent final consideration of the Principles project on Aggregate Litigation (“PLAL”) – that is to say, class actions and similar proceedings – we thought we owed our readers a report on how it turned out.
All three of the motions we discussed: about predominance/issue
After a two-year investigation, the Department of Justice charged Intermune with misbranding the drug Actimmune by promoting it off-label to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
(We like to use sentences like that. It gets our sophisticated readers salivating while discouraging the rest.)
After the deferred prosecution agreement and payment of the $42.5 million fine, the deluge.