Last year was a banner year for removal before service, with both the Second and Third Circuits weighing in to support application of the removal statute according its terms, thereby giving their blessing to the so-called “snap” or “wrinkle” removal practice that this Blog has advocated for a decade. See Gibbons v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
We’ve blogged before about the substantive (preemption) and procedural (removal) aspects of the Eliquis MDL – both of which the defense seemed to be winning. However, we cautioned in our 2018 “Best Of” post that these favorable decisions “still face[d] an appeal.”
No longer. The appeal has been decided, and the plaintiff’s losing streak continues.
Our recent post on “wrinkle removal” – that is, removal before service – case got us thinking. The opinion discussed in that post, Dechow v. Gilead Sciences, Inc., ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2019 WL 5176243 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 8, 2019), was out of California, in the Ninth Circuit. That didn’t keep Dechow from citing
Earlier this month we explained that a “wrinkle removal,” was one that capitalized on a “wrinkle” in the language of 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2), which provides that a case cannot be removed on the basis of diversity if any “properly joined and served” defendant is a citizen of the forum state. But if the forum
We just returned from four days of depositions in Roswell and Carlsbad, New Mexico. We were pleased to cross this state off of the “not yet visited” list on our bulletin board. But it seems that we found the least picturesque cities in the entire state. At this time of year, the 75-mile drive from
In the early days of the Blog, in 2009, when Bexis and Mark Herrmann were operating in relative obscurity, we posed the question whether it was ethical to remove to federal court a case that may well be non-removable and hope that opposing counsel is “asleep at the switch”:
“Heck, I’ll remove it anyway. Opposing
You haven’t heard of Blue Car syndrome? Remember the last time you went car shopping. You found a particular make and model (a “blue car”) and then, like magic, you see that same “blue car” 10 times in the next week. It’s in the parking lot of your gym. It pulls up next to you
On August 17, 2018, we observed in our latest comprehensive post on pre-service removal, that “[w]ith Court of Appeals decisions now breaking in our favor, we can start trying to change the minds of district courts that have previously gone the other way.”
And how.
On August 22 – less than a week after that
It’s been a while since we’ve discussed pre-service removal, other than to mention a recent case. Our last major post was “What’s up with Removal Before Service,” back in May 2011.
Since then, we pointed out an important statutory development – that when Congress rewrote other parts of the removal statute (28 U.S.C.
Recently, in downsizing our elderly father to a smaller residence and cleaning out his house, we came upon a cassette recording of our too-many-decades-ago Bat Mitzvah. We dug an old boom box out of the basement, listened to our sweet 13-year-old voice, and allowed the waves of nostalgia to wash over us. We remembered the