A long time ago in a law school relatively far away, we took torts as a first year law student. Many of the cases about which we learned (or were supposed to have learned) were from even longer ago and we had no idea how much some of those old cases would inform our practice.
Duty
Atkinson v. Luitpold – Part III

When we last left our story, plaintiffs had lost their fight to have Pennsylvania law apply to residents of Texas ( Atkinson I) and lost a chunk of their claims as barred by the Texas statute prohibiting failure to warn claims where a drug’s label has been approved by FDA and comment k (…
Limits to Duty 2.0 − On Product Manufacturers Supervising Doctors

Manufacturers supervising medical doctors? In two words, they don’t. Yet plaintiffs, particularly in cases where preemption forecloses more normal product liability claims, try to get courts to impose such duties. We took a look at that issue back during the early days of the blog, when it was still a Bexis/Herrmann operation, in our September…
D. Mass. Misreads New York Law to Make Patent-Holders Potentially Liable for Pre-Market Testing

It’s hard to escape the suspicion that blue states are more pro-plaintiff and red states are more pro-defense, though that is not a hard and fast rule. There are parts of Alabama and Texas where it is hard for an out of state corporate defendant to get a fair shake. Delaware and West Virginia also…
No Private Right of Action to Enforce Controlled Substances Act

We typically steer clear of discussing any opioid cases for client reasons. But today we have a case that did not involve our client in any way and that involves a discrete and important issue. Accordingly, we hereby render a bare-bones report.
The case, Floyd v. Feygin, et al., No. 507458/17 (Kings County, N.Y.…
Plaintiffs’ Lead Counsel Off The Hook In Yaz MDL

Multidistrict litigation is not special. By making this pithy observation, we do not mean to denigrate what has become the mother of all procedural mechanisms. What we mean is that multidistrict litigation is, at its core, nothing more than a bunch of venue transfers, bringing multiple cases involving common issues before a single district judge…
S.D. Texas Holds that Pharmacy Dispensing Wrong Drug Owes No Duty to Injured Third-Parties

Way back in law school we learned that a plaintiff suing for negligence must satisfy four elements: (1) duty, (2) breach, (3) causation, and (4) injury. Every one of these elements can be a battleground. Even what seems like the simplest inquiry – whether the plaintiff was injured – can be controversial. We have …