Four weeks ago, we posted concerning an MDL judge’s decision not to sanction a plaintiff lawyer for false representations concerning diversity jurisdiction. We disputed that acting in the client’s “best interest” was a good excuse and questioned whether MDL courts cut plaintiff lawyers more slack than they should. We also had a bit of a
This time of year, many of us are focused on the NFL playoffs. For someone who watches the Super Bowl for the commercials or the halftime show, which team wins may not matter much. For those devoted to a particular team, however, there is one possible result that will be truly satisfying. The reality is
We have lost track of how many times we have written on pelvic mesh cases as they have gone through a number of district courts on remand and occasionally up on appeal to circuit courts. One theme we have seen play out over and over is that plaintiff lawyers who took on more cases than
Stop us if you have heard this before. One of the big problems with MDLs in the era of unchecked lawyer advertising, litigation funding, and the focus of MDL judges on mass settlement is that a high percentage of plaintiffs never have to do any heavy lifting between filing their cases and participating in some
Famous (and infamous) Illinois trial lawyer Clarence Darrow once said that he never wished a man dead, but had occasionally read some obituaries with great satisfaction. (That same quote is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain.)
We’re no Darrow. We’ve never saved a client from capital punishment, or discredited a former presidential candidate in a
We will not get into the details of why, but we have been thinking recently about the issue of mechanisms for shifting costs and fees. The European “loser pays” rules—into which we will not delve, either—are often cited as one of the reasons why there is so much less product liability and other personal injury
We’ve all seen the signs – No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service. Their exact origin may be unknown but these signs appear to have come to popularity in the 1960s and 1970s as a response by businesses to keep “long-haired hippies” out of stores and restaurants. Or maybe they were there before that but just
In a classic case of overreaching, plaintiffs in the In re Abilify MDL, sought sanctions against the defendant for not preserving emails dating between 2002 and 2006 – more than a decade before the start of the litigation. We have a hard time even contemplating what a duty to preserve that covered those emails would
Just two weeks ago, we largely praised an MDL court’s handling of sanctions for a plaintiff’s stonewalling in response to discovery obligations, but thought the plaintiff got off pretty light for some really egregious conduct. Today, we report on a circuit court’s affirmance of discovery sanctions against a plaintiff counsel’s conduct for being overly aggressive
Stop us if you have heard this before. A novel or movie depicts litigation in which a large corporate defendant is sued for causing a plaintiff or plaintiffs significant injuries through a frivolous or non-beneficial product. In defending the litigation, the corporation and its unscrupulous lawyers hide important documents from the scrappy plaintiff lawyer, who,