This blog is no stranger to the In re Smith & Nephew Birmingham HIP Resurfacing (BBR) HIP Implant Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2775, pending in the District of Maryland. Nor have we hidden our disregard for several of its decisions, going back to its preemption ruling on defendant’s motion to dismiss which made our
Outside of the law, if you hear “R&R,” you might think of “rest and relaxation” or the original military term “rest and recuperation.” For many of us, the last year has had plenty of rest, but maybe not much true relaxation or recuperation. As in-person trials are set and the world inches toward a “return
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. We will not be talking about corned beef (which we revere) and cabbage (which we revile) today. Something different is on the menu.
A couple of weeks ago we were delighted to report on a Ninth Circuit affirmance of a decision by one of our former AUSA colleagues. This week we
If hard cases make bad law, big cases make really bad law. No cases are bigger than product liability multidistrict litigations. Some have populations dwarfing the towns where many of you were raised. Perhaps it is the high stakes involved, or perhaps it is the judicial obsession with settling many thousands of cases ASAP, but
When a lawsuit settles, both sides get something. When one of our cases settles, one of the things we get is a raft of mixed emotions. Undeniably, there is a sense of relief. Three weeks of 20 hour days suddenly open up. We can go home. (That sounds a little funny now that we are
We don’t write a lot about our neighboring state of Arizona, but a recent hip replacement case in the District of Arizona caught our eye. We lived in Arizona for a year back in the mid-1990s, and it is a genuinely interesting and underestimated place. The 2010 census results have Phoenix as the sixth largest
There is an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC showing a warrior with eyes on the back of his head and a blank, eyeless face on the front. That odd image reflects the profound truth that we have seen what has already happened but are blind to the future.