There are approximately 1.4 million people currently serving in the United States military and 16.5 million US military veterans—and we thank them all for their service. In prescription medical product liability litigation, especially in MDLs and mass torts, that means defendants are more likely than not to run into plaintiffs who received at least some
Discovery
N.D. Illinois Grants Protective Order Preventing Sales Rep Depositions

Litigation is about the subject at hand, of course. Is the product really defective? Did it really cause the alleged injury? But litigation can also be about the litigation itself. It’s like that line in The Beatles’ Penny Lane: “And though she feels as if she’s in a play/She is anyway.” The process and its…
What Are the “Usual Stipulations” for Discovery Depositions, Anyway?

We read a couple of recent articles in the local Philadelphia legal press questioning whether lawyers participating in depositions really had any idea what the “usual stipulations” for their depositions even were. Between the two articles, they cited three cases. The issue also prompted some discussion among us bloggers, with one of us commenting that, “for decades,” he has rejected reference to “usual stipulations” in depositions, in favor of the phrase “applicable rules and orders.”…
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Jurisdictional Discovery Is Not Bigger in Texas

One of the stock P-side responses, in the post-Bauman personal jurisdiction environment, to a jurisdictionally-based motion to dismiss is to seek “jurisdictional discovery” – the more onerous the better – in an attempt both to slow the often-inevitable dismissal and also to drive up the nuisance value of the case. That’s the main reason that on our personal jurisdiction cheat sheet we note when jurisdictional discovery is denied.…
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MDL Counterpoint

Not too long ago, we discussed the excessive indulgence of do-nothing plaintiffs in the Taxotere MDL – letting plaintiffs who took years just to serve their complaints slide. …
Ruling On Motion To Dismiss In A Pennsylvania (Prescription) Device Case Takes Us Back
Court Says No Way To Medical Device Plant Inspection

We came across something the other day that we don’t see very often, or really ever. The plaintiff in a medical device case served a request to inspect the two defendants’ manufacturing facilities, claiming that he was entitled to observe the premises where the device was made. Not so fast, said the defendants. And with…
Indiana Supreme Court Does Not Quite Adopt the Apex Doctrine, But Comes Fairly Close

Two weeks ago we blogged about the Georgia Supreme Court’s not-quite embrace of the apex doctrine limiting depositions of organization big-shots. In National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Finnerty, 2022 WL 2815848 (Indiana July 19, 2022), the Indiana Supreme Court did something similar. The Finnerty case was brought on behalf of college athletes against the…
Georgia Supreme Court does not Adopt the Apex Doctrine, but comes Fairly Close

Even a meritless lawsuit can impose an enormous burden on a company. There is the ridiculous expense, of course. Legal fees and other costs of defending a lawsuit can easily add up to more money than most juries award to plaintiffs. Some of those costs can be indirect but profound. Employees who would prefer to…
Lone Pine Stands Tall in Zostavax MDL

One of the problems with so-called Lone Pine orders in MDLs is timing – they are usually entered way too late, more as vehicles to enforce settlements than as any genuine effort to weed out the large number of bogus cases that everyone, including plaintiffs, admits are present in MDLs.
We can’t say that the…