We are not going to beat around the bush today. When we see a “prediction” of an “expansion” of state law by a federal court, we have only one question. What about Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938)? That should have been a front and center question for the court
This post is from the non-Dechert side of the Blog.
There were four opinions issued in the Zantac MDL on New Years Eve. We would like to tell you all about them, but we have to seek internal client approvals, and that will take time given the number of defendants. They are important, and overwhelmingly
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
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
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
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
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
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
We’ve heard more about the constitutional “emoluments clause,” Art 1 §9, clause 8, this year than during the entire rest of our legal careers. But while it’s illegal for anybody working for the U.S. government to accept anything of value from a “foreign state,” that doesn’t make it illegal, unethical, or even particularly
When this blogger hears “negligent undertaking,” my mind does not automatically turn to products liability – but rather to pre-teen children. Pre-teen children are at the age where they are asked (actually required) to “undertake” more and more duties and responsibilities. But often these duties are undertaken in a rather haphazard or lackadaisical way that