We have decried several times plaintiffs’ tendency in prescription medical product litigation, particularly mass torts, to try to sue into submission their opponents in scientific debates. This often takes the form of lawsuits alleging that journal articles, continuing medical education, and other forms of scientific discussion are actionable “misrepresentations.” We said some time ago:
In the coming weeks, there are sure to be many articles looking at what Judge Brown Jackson has written and what that might suggest about the future jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court if she is confirmed. We will not predict what will happen in confirmation. We will, however, weigh in on what Judge
Great decision from the Paraquat MDL recently, rejecting public nuisance claims in the product liability context. In re Paraquat Products Liability Litigation, 2022 WL 451898 (S.D. Ill. Feb. 14, 2022), involved what, in the herbicide context, is the equivalent of a prescription drug. That product “is not available for purchase by the public or
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
A little more than six months ago (June 21, 2021), the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey began enforcing its Local Rule 7.1.1, requiring disclosure of third-party litigation funding. Local Rule 7.1.1 provides:
Within 30 days of filing an initial pleading or transfer of the matter to this district, including the
There are two main questions that surround the issue of all-vaccinated juries in the COVID-19 era. The first is can you seek to exclude non-vaccinated persons from the venire for cause. The second is do you want to. At just about every CLE program we attend these days, whether in person or electronically, where judges
Developments in the Rouviere v. DePuy litigation have already produced two of our blogposts. Rouviere v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., 471 F. Supp.3d 571 (S.D.N.Y. 2020), which we discussed here, produced one of the first major decisions of the COVID-19 pandemic on remote depositions as the “new normal.” Then, Rouviere v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc.
Here’s something we’ve never seen before in a mass tort MDL. In In re Zostavax (Zoster Vaccine Live) Products Liability Litigation, 2021 WL 3375941 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 3, 2021), two former MDL plaintiffs who had suffered summary judgment against their claims were allowed to rejoin the MDL – to assert legal malpractice claims against
From the beginning of the Blog we’ve made our position on “cy pres” class action distributions plain – we hate them. We had hopes that the United States Supreme Court would deep six the whole concept in Frank v. Gaos, 139 S. Ct. 1041 (2019), but as we guessed here,
That’s the main lesson of the emerging fiasco that is the ALI’s benignly named “Concluding Provisions” project for the Restatement Third of Torts. While this title suggests that the Institute is merely engaged in routine “mop up” work, nothing could be further from the truth. Any number of significant tort-related topics were not addressed by