Back in April, we pondered whether the new judge in the Valsartan MDL would change things for the better. In contrast to the Zantac MDL, which was established a year later and has proceeded on a very similar contamination theory, the first several years of the Valsartan MDL saw a bunch of bad rulings on
“To be clear, while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established . . . .” That is not your DDL bloggers speaking (although we did add the emphasis). It is not a drug manufacturer speaking, nor any particular doctor or researcher speaking. It
You know it’s going to be an interesting ride when the appellate brief reads like a conspiracy theory starter pack. Which is how we read the issues raised on appeal in Thelen v. Somatics, LLC, — F4th –, 2025 WL 2749888 (11th Cir. Sep. 29, 2025): erroneous entry of summary judgment on design
Our readership is tuned into current events and stays up to date on significant drug and device litigation. We bet no one missed that Taylor and Travis are getting married, or that a college football game being hyped as the biggest regular season game in at least a decade (Texas v. Ohio St.) happens tomorrow. We also bet that the blog’s readers know what GLP-1 inhibitors are—medications developed for diabetes and now widely prescribed for weight loss. At least one poll estimated that 12% of the U.S. population has taken a GLP-1 medication.
About a year ago, we posted about the successful efforts of the defendants in the GLP-1 MDL to have the court, rather than permitting unfettered discovery at the outset, instead tee-up certain “cross-cutting” issues that would impact the scope of the MDL. Yesterday we posted about the MDL court’s ruling on preemption of the plaintiffs’ design defect claims. Today we address a separate decision addressing the admissibility of expert testimony on a cross-cutting issue. In re Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 3094, 2025 WL 2396801 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 15, 2025).Continue Reading Trimming Down the GLP-1 MDL
Lawyers like to grouse about their lot in life. We complain about stress and the things that most contribute to such stress: hard work and unpleasant people. But if you labor long enough in this profession, you end up running into many excellent folks. By “excellent,” we mean brilliant and generous. We’ve long deployed a
Not that long ago (last time we posted), the Sixth Circuit issued an unpublished opinion that affirmed the exclusion of an expert (yay!) but missed the boat on the amendments to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and its reinforcement of the expert exclusion test (boo!).
Today, we get to tell you about a
While updating the preemption chapter of his drug and device product liability treatise, Bexis came across a proposition he had not thought about in a long time. In two opinions in the Birmingham Hip (“BHR”) MDL, the court, under the aegis of Fed. R. Evid. 702, excluded expert testimony because it solely
This post is from the non-Butler Snow side of the blog.
In Hill v. Medical Device Business Services, Inc., No. 24-5797, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 17835, 2025 WL 1950300 (6th Cir. July 16, 2025), the Sixth Circuit affirmed an expert exclusion/Rule 702/Don’t Say Daubert decision in a case that we last wrote about
This is from the non-Butler Snow side of the Blog.
Readers of the Blog know that we believe in strictly applying the requirements of Federal Rules of Evidence 702 and 703. Long before the 2023 amendments to Rule 702 were a twinkle in the advisory committee’s collective eye, we were pounding the proverbial drum that
From a doctrinal standpoint, courts rely on a well-established principle: experts are permitted to testify to assist the fact-finder, not to persuade them with rhetorical flourish. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 permits experts to offer opinions grounded in their expertise, but that doesn’t open the floodgates to courtroom TED Talks. The moment an expert starts