The legal doctrine we discuss today, the reporter’s privilege, lies outside our traditional bailiwick but is worth a quick visit. Recognized in most states, the reporter’s privilege—also known as the journalist’s or newsman’s privilege—is an absolute or conditional “protection, under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources.” Black’s
Discovery
S.D. Alabama Puts Surgeons Before Sales Representatives
Plaintiffs love sales representatives. They love to use them to try to keep cases in state court—naming them as non-diverse defendants. They love to try to use them to get around preemption—claiming a direct duty from the rep to the plaintiff. And they certainly love making sales representative statements and conduct a focal point of…
The Two Most Significant New Ediscovery for Defendants Decisions
In our recent ediscovery for defendants update, we highlighted two of the twenty-eight cases we included as the most important: In re Tasigna (Nilotinib) Products Liability Litigation, 2023 WL 6064308 (Mag. M.D. Fla. Sept. 18, 2023), and Davis v. Disability Rights New Jersey, 291 A.3d 812 (N.J. Super. App. Div. March 16, 2023). Today we’re explaining why.Continue Reading The Two Most Significant New Ediscovery for Defendants Decisions
2023 Updates to Ediscovery for Defendants Cheat Sheet
It’s been a while (since mid-2021) since we last updated our cheat sheet devoted to ediscovery for defendants. That’s because, unlike most of our other cheat sheets and scorecards, cases involving defense discovery of plaintiffs’ social media can be found in a wide variety of non-drug/device contexts – other personal injury, employment, civil rights, anything…
Lawyers for Civil Justice Advocates Privacy-Protective Changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
In addition to its expected slam of the judiciary’s Federal Rules Committee largely toothless proposal for an MDL-specific rule of civil procedure, the LCJ recently did something both innovative and unexpected (at least to us) – on September 19, it proposed amending multiple federal civil rules to address privacy issues. See LCJ, “FRCP…
District Court Hands VA Significant Touhy Loss
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…
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.”Continue Reading What Are the “Usual Stipulations” for Discovery Depositions, Anyway?
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.Continue Reading Jurisdictional Discovery Is Not Bigger in Texas
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. Continue Reading MDL Counterpoint