The decision in In re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation, 969 F.3d 1067 (9th Cir. 2020) (“Booker”), is yet another reminder that multidistrict litigation as it is currently conducted is a fundamentally flawed process, dedicated more to forcing settlements than to any of the goals envisioned by Congress when it passed
It’s hard to believe, but fully five months after COVID-19 was officially declared to be a “pandemic,” it’s still extraordinarily difficult to get oneself tested – particularly if one is not already sick or exposed. Maine has been one of the most successful states in reducing the virus’ spread, with the third lowest rate of
We’ve all seen the signs – No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service. Their exact origin may be unknown but these signs appear to have come to popularity in the 1960s and 1970s as a response by businesses to keep “long-haired hippies” out of stores and restaurants. Or maybe they were there before that but just
On many occasions, we’ve remarked that in modern prescription medical product liability litigation MDLs, the main objective of both plaintiffs and their counsel is to file as many lawsuits as possible, and then to do the bare minimum possible to avoid dismissal. The idea is to run up the numbers, make the defendants spend huge
At this point, let’s call it what it is: anti-social distancing. The second word follows much better from that first word. They go together. Always have. It gives you the right mindset too. When you go for a perilous walk around the block, and you see someone doing the same thing, and they start coming
Here is an interesting order that recently emerged from the Benicar multi-district litigation. Certain plaintiffs’ counsel (identified by name in the order) represent about 450 “plaintiffs who have settled their claims against defendants in exchange for a monetary payment.” In re Benicar (Olmesartan) Products Liability Litigation, 2019 WL 6271285, at *1 (D.N.J. Nov. 22,
Picture this. Invitations go out for a Thanksgiving get-together and the host and expected guests together sort out who will bring what foods and how everything will be served. A sideboard is loaded up with the traditional holiday foods, along with a collection of everyone’s quirky favorite salad items to allow easy compilation of a
We write as we prepare to head to the airport for a long weekend in Whitefish, Montana, a bit of paradise in in the Flathead River Valley of northwest Montana, just outside of Glacier National Park. As we have mentioned in other posts, Whitefish is the home of beloved friends of many decades, and we
We are writing about a case that does not involve drugs or devices because it runs through some of the very same personal jurisdiction issues we have warned about post-Bauman. Adams v. NHL, MDL No, 14-2551, Case No. 15-cv-00472 (SRN/JSM), 2019 WL 5079980 (D. Minn. Oct. 10, 2019), is a case from the
This post is solely the product of the Reed Smith side of the Blog.
Readers may recall that a couple years ago we proposed reworking the federal multi-district litigation statute, 28 U.S.C.A. §1407, in a variety of ways. Simultaneously, some of us have been working with Lawyers for Civil Justice to attempt MDL change through