There are two main issues that make the eyes of your dutiful Drug and Device Law bloggers well up in frustration over In re Taxotere (Docetaxel) Eye Inj. Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 3023, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 233514, 2025 WL 3442731 (E.D. La. Dec. 1, 2025).
The first is a gut-level, “this is an
Is it really an opposition to a motion to compel if the brief does not bemoan the plaintiff’s discovery “fishing expedition”?
We don’t think so. A license to practice law seems to mandate that the holder must use the fishing expedition metaphor whenever discovery is the topic. As a result, we were a little amused
Some litigations are gifts that keep on giving. A big chunk of DDL work product consists of commentary on a couple of mass torts. Maybe it is a version of the 80-20 rule, or how a huge percentage of crimes are committed by a relatively small group of career criminal recidivists. For a while, Aredia-Zometa
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
The day before this post went live there was a retirement ceremony for Judge Jon P. McCalla, the federal district judge for whom we clerked three decades ago. After serving as an Army officer in the Vietnam War, Judge McCalla got his J.D. from Vanderbilt and clerked for Judge Bailey Brown of the Western District
This post comes from the non-Butler Snow side of the blog.
The Bair Hugger MDL has an up and down history. First, we lauded the district court’s Rule 702 rulings that led to summary judgment across the board for the defendant. But then the Eighth Circuit reversed. The cases came back to the district court
Mulitdistrict litigations – both federal MDLs and their state-court equivalents – sound like noble endeavors. The concept is simple: consolidate similar lawsuits under one judge to streamline proceedings. This, in theory, avoids contradictory rulings and saves court resources. But when you pan out past the injured plaintiffs and mountains of medical records, you’ll spot one
When the proposed (soon to be approved) Fed. R. Civ. P. 16.1, concerning MDL practice was finalized last year, we gave it one cheer in our “New Rule 16.1 – Better Than Nothing, But Not by a Lot” blogpost. We were, and remain, concerned that the provision concerning early vetting of MDL claimants will prove inadequate to address the serious problem created by huge numbers of meritless claims. But we did point out that the section about exchanging information about the “factual basis” of claims was different from the other items on the rule’s topic list: it used “how and when,” as opposed to “whether” or “if” – indicating that such early exchanges were viewed as mandatory (in some form). This, we thought, gave the defense an opening for seeking serious early vetting of MDL claims.
That may already be happening.Continue Reading Excellent MDL Early Vetting Order Raises Hopes for Rule 16.1
On the internet, “because reasons” is the default when you don’t have the time or energy to explain why something is correct, but you are sticking with your viewpoint nonetheless.
It is the opposite of what our profession expects from lawyers and the courts: We all are supposed to explain, with crystalline clarity, why our
MDLs are supposed to follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That’s the reminder the Sixth Circuit gave in In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation, 956 F.3d 838, 844 (6th Cir. 2020):
[T]he law governs an MDL court’s decisions just as it does a court’s decisions in any other case. . . . Here, the relevant law takes the form of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Promulgated pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, those Rules are binding upon court and parties alike, with fully the force of law. . . . Respectfully, the district court’s mistake was to think it had authority to disregard the Rules’ requirements . . . in favor of enhancing the efficiency of the MDL as a whole. . . . But MDLs are not some kind of judicial border country, where the rules are few and the law rarely makes an appearance. For neither §1407 nor Rule 1 remotely suggests that, whereas the Rules are law in individual cases, they are merely hortatory in MDL ones.
Id. at 844 (citations omitted). More recently the Civil Rules Committee made the same point in approving new Fed. R. Civ. P. 16.1: “The Rules of Civil Procedure, including the pleading rules, continue to apply in all MDL proceedings.” Comment to Rule 16.1(b)(3)(A).
Bad things happen – usually to defendants – when an MDL adopts practices designed to cut procedural corners that the drafters of the rules put there for a reason.Continue Reading MDL Procedural Shortcuts Once Again Disadvantage Defendants