MDL defendants in prescription medical product liability MDLs have been complaining for years about thousands of cases being brought without the slightest pre-filing vetting – “plaintiffs” who cannot establish that they ever actually used the products of the defendant(s) they have sued and/or who similarly have no proof that they suffered the injury(ies) as to
As a follow-on to our post last year about remote (Zoom) depositions), we received a suggestion that we examine MDL orders to see how they have been handling remote deposition procedure during the COVID-19 pandemic. That made sense to us because in MDLs every procedural jot and tittle is gone over with a fine-toothed comb.
Discovery can be very expensive. Defendants really like to win on motions to dismiss in part because they get to avoid the costs of discovery. We can pile on these shockingly obvious statements with two more. From a defense perspective, a narrow scope of discovery tends to be a good thing. If narrow discovery leads
It’s been a while (since mid-2020) 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
With November representing the 18th month of socially distanced litigation, we thought we’d take a look at what courts have said about remote (usually Zoom) depositions. Like it or not, we think they’re here to stay.
Yes/No
The first question is whether or not to have them. Can one side impose them unilaterally?
The answer
We are careful when discussing discovery sanctions, particularly spoliation, for a simple reason. The companies we represent that make medical products tend to have allegations about failing to produce discoverable information in the course of the litigation against them. Indeed, there is a style of litigating against drug and device companies, and other corporate defendants,
Are protective orders worth the paper they are written on? We have heard cynical attorneys pose that question, usually in a rhetorical fashion. But our view has always been that protective orders—which we define here as court orders entered to protect against the disclosure of confidential information—are important and ought to be followed. This view
This guest post comes to you courtesy of Christian Saucedo, an associate in Reed Smith‘s LSHI group. He was inspired to follow up on a post we wrote earlier about confidential ediscovery involving computerized product design information. It’s a serious topic, involving the “crown jewels” of product manufacturing. As always our guest poster
It’s crunch time people. No more browsing. No more pondering. No more scrolling. Pick something and buy it. More importantly, you need to ship it. You may not be able to see all of your family this year, but you still want to make sure your gift makes it under their tree. If so, today
In our personal jurisdiction posts, we’ve generally taken a dim view of plaintiffs who attempt to oppose Rule 12(b)(2) dismissal motions with requests for jurisdictional discovery. Both our experience and our perspective leads us to view such requests as overwhelmingly likely to be fishing expeditions, designed more to delay and to increase the expense of