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Today’s guest post by Reed Smith’s Kevin Hara arises indirectly from the Zantac MDL, but addresses a recurring preliminary question of federal jurisdiction − fraudulent joinder. That issue, in turn, involves product identification (another problem in MDLs) and a pointer for pharmacies that want to avoid being involved in pharmaceutical litigation. As always our guest

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In the coming weeks, there are sure to be many articles looking at what Judge Brown Jackson has written and what that might suggest about the future jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court if she is confirmed.  We will not predict what will happen in confirmation.  We will, however, weigh in on what Judge

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Defendants get accused of using snap removals as some sort of nefarious litigation tactic to thwart the forum defendant rule and drive cases into federal court.  But all defendants do when they “snap” remove, is follow the law as written.  In case you are new to this area of the law, we will stop here

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Those of you following the fortunes of COVID-19-related litigation should check out these two recently decided cases:  Garcia v. Welltower OpCo Group LLC, 2021 WL 492581 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 10, 2021), and Fields v. Brown, 2021 WL 510620 (E.D. Tex. Feb. 11, 2021).

Garcia, the older of the two (by one day),

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Approximately 18 months ago we reported on C.D. California cases that silicone breast implant defendants managed to keep in federal court and then get dismissed with prejudice. We expressed delight with the opinions because the court’s discussions of fraudulent joinder and preemption were particularly insightful. No doubt another source of our delight was that the

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There is no reasonable basis to remand Cazares v. Ortho El Paso, P.A., 2020 WL 4562231 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 7, 2020) because there is no reasonable basis for plaintiff’s strict liability claims against a hospital.  And that is sufficient.

That, however, is not what the magistrate who first ruled on plaintiff’s motion to remand