St. Louis City courts have long been considered among the most pro-plaintiff in the country and for years litigation tourists flocked there using multi-plaintiff complaints with a single city resident to secure the venue. Then the world changed in 2019. The Missouri Supreme Court decided State ex rel. Johnson & Johnson v. Burlison, 567
After recent posts on the AHM (or Hippo) litigation, we read the excellent FDA reply brief and considered yet another post on the subject. With the oral argument before the Fifth Circuit yesterday and more briefs and decisions to come, we elected to deal with a topic that was not quite so weighty. In
We start this, our last post of 2022, by indulging in a few words about hope. Jumping way back, the story begins when we were around 20 and moved to Nashville (from Philadelphia) for a couple of years, on a whim. That’s the only way to describe it – there was no good reason, except that we thought it would be fun. While we were in Nashville, we made some friends who were then big names in the country music industry. They are still our friends, more than 40 years later. And, though many have forgotten them, they still perform, but at coffeehouses and “small dates,” not in huge auditoriums. Last week, one of our friends, who still lives in Nashville, did a “swing” of four such small dates in Pennsylvania and its environs. She (and her guitarist) stayed with us all week. On the last night, we held a house concert in our home. As we sat in our living room, surrounded by friends and fellowship and oh-so-beautiful music, we felt magic, and we felt hope, both of which have eluded us amid the multi-faceted darkness that marked much of 2022. Bottom line is that we don’t always have choice in the events that shape our lives. But we can choose music, and we can find hope. We hope your 2023 is filled with both.
The plaintiff in today’s case also was denied choice, this time her choice of the venue for her case. In Yumei Li-Bachar v. Johnson & Johnson, et al., 2022 WL 17094600 (D. Minn. Nov. 21, 2022), the plaintiff, a Michigan resident at all times relevant to the lawsuit, was implanted with the defendant’s pelvic mesh device in Michigan. Fourteen years later, she underwent revision surgery in Rochester, Minnesota. She filed suit in the District of Minnesota, asserting the usual litany of product liability claims, and the defendant moved to transfer venue to the Western District of Michigan.
The court explained that, under the “transfer statute,” 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), it had broad discretion when considering a motion to transfer venue. The court continued:
The decision to transfer under Section 1404(a) involves a two-step inquiry. First, the district court must determine whether the action might have been brought in the proposed transferee district. Second, the district court must weigh three factors, which are whether transfer would be (1) convenient for the parties, (2) convenient for the witnesses, and (3) in the interests of justice.
Continue Reading Change of Venue Granted in D. Minn. Mesh Case
We’ve posted before about Missouri’s wretched venue rules that had allowed litigation tourists to flock to the plaintiffs’ favored St. Louis City venue in mass tort (and other) actions by joining dozens of non-residents with a single resident plaintiff. In particular, earlier this year we hailed a Missouri Supreme Court decision, State ex rel. Johnson
Bexis is known to say that nothing good ever comes out of Missouri, but the Missouri Supreme Court has proven him wrong. We have long made exceptions to Bexis’ proclamation for Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, and Kansas City barbeque, and we can now add to that list the Missouri Supreme Court’s new opinion in State
We are old enough to treasure the memory of sitting in a darkened movie theater with our mother and sisters watching the original “Mary Poppins.” We were transfixed and transported by the sheer magic of the film, and we spent the next many months playing our souvenir cast album over and over on our tiny
You can waive remand. That’s Lexecon, Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26 (1998). But, if you agree to remand, you’re going back whence you came. So said the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation earlier this month in In re: Biomet M2A Magnum Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, 2018
Hope springs eternal. At least that is what the optimists say, and while we would like to see the bright side of the Missouri Supreme Court’s split opinion on venue in Barron v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc., No. SC 96151, 2017 WL 4001487 (Mo. Sept. 12, 2017), we are having trouble this morning finding our