In our experience, plaintiffs in product liability cases always seek punitive damages. Even when their claimed injuries are quite modest or their state does not permit punitive damages, they give it a shot. We have had cases with partial summary judgment on punitive damages, with directed verdict on punitive damages, and with jury verdicts for
Punitive Damages
Choice of Law Nixes Punitive Damages in Remanded Mesh Case

New Jersey ain’t Florida and vice versa. Obviously, it’s warmer in Florida for more of the year and it never gets cold enough to snow. That could be a pro or a con. Florida has the second longest coastline among U.S. States which gives it a greater opportunity to have more highly rated beaches. But…
D. Arizona Precludes Pelvic Mesh Punitive Damages

The pelvic mesh case of the week – McBroom v. Ethicon, Inc., 2022 WL 604889 (D. Arizona March 1, 2022) – focuses on the regulatory status of the device. We always knew it was an important issue, and McBroom provides yet another reason why that is so.
As you must know by now, the…
Another Reason MDL Defendants Should Not Waive Their Lexecon Rights

This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.
From the first time that we discussed Lexecon, Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26 (1998), and the related MDL concept of Lexecon waivers, we’ve been plenty leery of defendants in cases transferred into multidistrict litigation waiving their retransfer rights…
TwIqbal And Punitive Damages

Bexis was updating the chapter of his drug and medical device treatise pertaining to, inter alia, punitive damages and came across In re Valsartan, Losartan, & Irbesartan Products Liability Litigation, 2020 WL 8970347 (D.N.J. March 12, 2020).
Consistent with a number of alarmingly pro-plaintiff decisions that we’ve already seen from that MDL,…
Out of Africano – Hernia Mesh Win Produces More Good Law

This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.
We previously discussed some favorable motion in limine rulings in the hernia (not pelvic) mesh case, Africano v. Atrium Medical Corp., 2021 WL 4477867 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 30, 2021). They were a welcome change from the appalling MDL choice of law rulings against…
More Interesting Post-MDL IVC Rulings

Ever since our Bone Screw days, when we used the strategy to great effect, we’ve rooted for defendants undertaking to beat post-MDL remand plaintiffs in guerrilla litigation in numerous courts across the country. The way to do it is twofold: On the one hand the defendant creates litigation uncertainty by hemming the other side in…
Clarifying the Arizona Punitive Damages Statute

Bexis has just returned from a week’s vacation in Acadia National Park in Maine. After being rained out for a couple of days due to a stray hurricane, he climbed four mountains in three days – the Precipice Trail up Mt. Champlain; the West Face Cadillac Mountain trail up that mountain, and the Jordan Cliffs/Deer…
Multi-Plaintiff Trial Issue at the Supreme Court

We’ve griped about multi-plaintiff consolidated trials for years on this blog, both generally, and in the specific context of prescription medical product liability litigation. Now the issue is before the Supreme Court in one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice that we’ve seen – and several of us practice in Philadelphia – a…
Good and Bad in IVC Filter Decision out of the Middle District of Tennessee

We tend to favor a “glass half full” outlook. We are preternaturally sunshiny during our daily “how was your day” calls from the 86-year-old Drug and Device Law Dowager Countess. (We have not mentioned, for example, that our aging dog has begun sleeping most of the day and barking most of the night, resulting in…