Photo of Bexis

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

Photo of Bexis

Have you ever had a plaintiff dead to rights with a dispositive motion, and instead of opposing the motion, the plaintiff moves for voluntary dismissal?  We have, and it can be annoying as hell, especially if the judge is one of those who would rather not decide anything – and grants the plaintiff’s motion.

What

Photo of Bexis

Only five days after our recent post highlighting the possible no-private-right-of-action implications of the (to us, anyway) obscure Astra USA, Inc. v. Santa Clara County, California, 563 U.S. 110 (2011), case, the Fourth Circuit applied it along the lines we had speculated could be helpful to defendants.  Bauer v. Elrich, ___ F.4th ___,

Photo of Bexis

This is actually Rachel Weil’s post, but she is having password problems, so Bexis is doing the actual posting

***********

We spent last weekend in a shore house with extended family members (all vaccinated, of course) gathered to celebrate a cousin’s milestone birthday.  Since we had last gathered, babies had been born, the family matriarch

Photo of Bexis

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was a Bexis/Herrmann operation, we wrote about the California Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to all that food litigation that now plagues that state − Farm Raised Salmon Cases, 175 P.3d 1170 (Cal. 2008).  We explained how the court In Farm Raised

Photo of Stephen McConnell

We are in the midst of a multidistrict litigation in which the claims are even more frail than usual, the quality of the ‘inventory’ is even junkier than usual, and the pace of discovery regarding individual cases is even slower than usual. Nevertheless, the plaintiff lawyers (joined, sadly, by the court) frequently express exasperation with

Photo of Stephen McConnell

We are recovering from a near-trial experience. It settled at the beginning of jury selection, and with that settlement came the usual mixture of relief and letdown. Colleagues congratulate you on the resolution, and you’re not sure what to say. It was certainly a good settlement for the client. But our team had worked up

Photo of Stephen McConnell

We got our second anti-Covid jab this week, so we’ll celebrate by discussing a COVID/PREP Act case. The PREP Act (PREP stands for “Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness”) declaration of immunity is limited to “covered countermeasures” obtained either through agreement with the federal government or otherwise in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of