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We have often characterized preemption as one of the most powerful tools in product liability defense lawyers’ toolboxes.  It also gets utilized effectively by lawyers defending against a variety of consumer fraud cases about FDA-regulated products.  We have, for instance, covered a number of decisions where plaintiffs complained about a range of food labeling issues

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We often marvel at how plaintiffs’ attorneys find new ways to sue businesses, including under RICO.  Take for example the ever-increasing number of “MSP” plaintiffs that we are seeing in the published opinions.  We see plaintiffs called MSP Recovery, MSPA Claims, MSP Series, MSP-MAO, etc., and we are told that many or all of them

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South Carolina is a lovely state with mostly lovely weather, though this time of year its appearance on the map looks like the country’s jutted chin daring a hurricane to sock it. South Carolina courts have been known to sock it to defendants, particularly in asbestos cases.    

Luckily, asbestos has nothing to do with today’s

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A plaintiff lawyer recently filed a case against our client in North Carolina.  He has made a settlement demand that any rational observer would regard as ambitious to the point of outrageous.  Despite that crazy number, we are on fairly friendly terms with the plaintiff lawyer. We jawbone at each other in a generally good

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The recent decision of the Hawai’i Supreme Court in State ex rel. Shikada v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., ___ P.3d ___, 2023 WL 2519857 (Haw. March 15, 2023), isn’t all bad by any means – but it’s bad enough, and it carries with it the prospect of liability based on a virtually limitless number of individualized genetic traits, so you can bet we’re not very happy after reading it.

You’d be right.Continue Reading Trouble in Paradise

Photo of Stephen McConnell

The plaintiffs in Acosta-Aguayo v. Walgreen Co., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34836  (N.D. Ill. March 2, 2023), visited their friendly neighborhood drug store and bought a lawsuit.  Well, first they bought pain relief patches.  Those patches were over the counter (OTC) products.  No prescriptions were required.  Maybe those pain patches worked and maybe they