Photo of Eric Alexander

Given the events of the last eleven months or so, we give ourselves and other legal commentators a preemptive pass for the following situation:  you read a case, you think about how you would describe it, and you see that you have described similar cases in a similar way more than once.  This could be

Photo of Eric Alexander

Along with Shakespeare’s plays and painfully plodding Victorian novels, there is a good chance that your western high school (or perhaps college) education included at least a smattering of philosophy.  The line between political science and philosophy can be hard to draw—Kant, Hobbes, and Rousseau might be featured in classes under either heading, for instance—but

Photo of Eric Alexander

There was a time when we posted frequently about attempts to impose liability for injuries allegedly caused by the use of a generic prescription drug. Much of the attention has been directed to trying to pin liability on the company that developed the drug originally, even when the plaintiff took another company’s generic version. When

Photo of Bexis

The opinion, Schrecengost v. Coloplast Corp., 2019 WL 6465398 (W.D. Pa. Dec. 2, 2019), recently “predicted” that Pennsylvania would allow strict liability design and warning defect claims in cases involving prescription medical products.  Id. at *11-13.  In so doing Schrecengost was not only wrong, but loud wrong.  First, without even a serious discussion, Schrecengost

Photo of Bexis

We’ve been backing the proposition that the Erie doctrine concerning federal courts’ prediction of state law precludes courts clothed only with diversity jurisdiction from expanding state tort liability in novel ways since just about the beginning of the Blog.  However, our analyses have tended to be forward looking.  We typically start with the Supreme Court’s

Photo of Bexis

On practically no issue has this Blog been more insistent than on the principle of Erie conservatism when federal courts sitting in diversity undertake to “predict” state tort law.  Our posts on this subject go back to 2006.  At that time, we said:

In both of these decisions, novel questions of state law, involving

Photo of Bexis

Sure, it was enjoyable to read In re DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., Pinnacle Hip Implant Product Liability Litigation, ___ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 1954759 (5th Cir. April 25, 2018) (“Pinnacle Hip”), to see plaintiffs’ counsel hoisted on their own petard of improper and prejudicial evidence and arguments.  But there’s more to Pinnacle Hip