So learned some plaintiffs in In re: Hair Relaxer Marketing Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL 3060, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 206474 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 13, 2024). While not a drug or device case, the problem it exhibits is common to many mass torts. Plaintiffs’ counsels’ solicitations produce a rush to file complaints
Today’s case is not a drug or device case, but its holding is helpful to our clients who face state law nuisance claims arising from the acts of third parties.Continue Reading Court Shuts Down Expansion of New York Nuisance Law
Plaintiff lawyers read this blog, which we like. Criticism occasionally comes our way because the blogposts – horrors! – harbor a particular point of view. And that point of view occasionally gets recharacterized as bias or an admission against our clients. Such recharacterizations are invariably nonsensical. So far, they have never obtained even a foothold
When Summer temperatures rise, our analytical ambitions drop. Torpor sets in, and it sets in hard. It is no accident that it is in July and August when our posts are most likely to contain more pop culture than precedent. (Here is one of our favorite examples.) Meanwhile, this is also the time of
Every once in a while, we find ourselves on a federal government corner of the internet, and we usually are surprised to discover (or are reminded) that these webpages often have materials that are worth knowing about, even downright useful, for our type of practice.
These sites are not always easy to navigate, however, so
Here is the latest guest post from our Reed Smith colleague, Kevin Hara. He examines whether a prevailing party in litigation can recover, as “costs,” the expenses of witness depositions conducted remotely – a question that has arisen with increasing frequency since the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a general trend towards use of remote depositions. Since our clients could be on either side of this issue, Kevin’s research addresses both sides. As always, our guest bloggers deserve all the credit (and any blame) for their efforts.Continue Reading Guest Post – Are Remote Deposition Costs Recoverable by the Prevailing Party? Maybe, Yes, Maybe, No.
Last week we read a couple of online articles, including in the ABA Journal, about the unique questioning style of United States Senator John Kennedy (R- Louisiana) when it comes to federal judicial nominees.
By now, we all know how judicial nominees do the usual dance of saying as little as possible. Understandably, they decline to
Until now, the Bair Hugger MDL was known (at least to us) for two things: First, was the Eighth Circuit’s horribly lax application of the Fed. R. Civ. P. 702 standards for expert admissibility – a decision that we consider the worst drug/device decision of 2021. However, since then the federal judiciary’s Civil Rules Committee has adopted changes to Rule 702 that will, as of this December, overturn the Eighth Circuit’s weak approach to Rule 702. Second, the manner in which the Bair Hugger litigation began was unusually sketchy, as we detailed here and here.
Recently, however, the tawdry manner of Bair Hugger’s origin was matched by a specious attempt to disqualify the MDL judge. It’s obvious to us what is going on here. Both sides know that plaintiffs’ free pass on Rule 702 expires this December, when the rule amendments take effect. Assuming the expert testimony doesn’t change, the defendant essentially gets a do-over. So the Bair Hugger plaintiffs desperately desired that do-over to be decided by a different judge.Continue Reading Plaintiffs’ Judge Shopping Ploy Fails in Bair Hugger MDL
When we last commented on the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA litigation, back in April, the United States Supreme Court had just stayed what we described as “a truly ridiculous decision purporting to invalidate a number of actions taken by FDA with regard to mifepristone, the only currently marketed approved medication for medical abortion.”
Beginning – at least − with the awful decision in Schrecengost v. Coloplast Corp., 425 F. Supp.3d 448, 465 (W.D. Pa. 2019) (discussed here), plaintiffs seeking to overturn the longstanding Pennsylvania (since the 1940s) prohibition against strict liability in prescription medical product liability litigation have been systematically attacking the precedential weight