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
Negligent Misrepresentation
Seventh Circuit Nixes Negligent Misrepresentation Claim Premised on Alleged Discovery Violation in Prior, Settled Case

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…
The Sun Shines on Heightened Pleading Standards in Arizona

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…
S.D. Cal. Dismisses Negligent Misrepresentation Claim for Lack of Rule 9(b) Specificity

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.…