By now our beef with Multidistrict Litigations has become monotonous: plaintiff lawyers assemble enormous inventories of weak cases, then contort the bellwether pool to ensure that only their best cases go to trial. We remember an oral argument in front of an MDL judge in which we employed statistics to show that a representative MDL
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For Auld Lang Syne, Another Good Decision from the Taxotere MDL
Taxotere Plaintiffs Taken Down By Their Own Expert — Again
One recent night, three-plus months into our ongoing solitary confinement, we found ourselves laughing very hard at a classic Road Runner cartoon. We especially loved the moment when Wile E. Coyote stepped off a cliff then froze in mid-air as knowledge of his fate dawned on him. That image popped into our mind as we…
More Great News from the Taxotere MDL
Yesterday afternoon, only a few minutes after we saw the storm warning and cut short our walk with the Drug and Device Law Little Rescue Dogs, a brief but violent thunderstorm crashed through our neighborhood in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. (We note, parenthetically, that the adjective “violent” describes our weather with unprecedented and escalating…
More Good “Warnings Causation” News from the Taxotere MDL
We are certain that profound revelations – scientific, economic, and political – will arise from the Covid-19 crisis. For now, we comment on bits of knowledge we have gained so far. We have learned, spending 24 hours each day with our dogs, that they bark 20 hours each day. We have learned that the concept…
Excellent Warnings Causation Decision out of the Taxotere MDL
Like most of you, and like our co-bloggers (from whom you will hear similar laments this week) we are in the midst of “social distancing.” We have locked down our home, begun an indefinite period of working remotely, ordered a case of boxed macaroni and cheese, and fielded emails cancelling an inordinate number of long-awaited…
Taxotere Court Finds that Distributor was Fraudulently Joined; Denies Remand
Plaintiffs will go to great lengths to stay out of federal court, including naming local defendants against whom the plaintiffs have no real intention of pursuing the lawsuit with even a smidgen of seriousness. Sometimes that is called “improper joinder,” but we prefer the term “fraudulent joinder” because that more accurately captures what is afoot.…
Taxotere Court Excludes Expert Opinion on How the Medical Community Would Have Reacted to a Different Warning
We write today about a partial exclusion of a plaintiff expert in the upcoming Taxotere bellwether trial. We have blogged about other aspects of the Taxotere litigation previously. (Here and here, for example.) The case is In re Taxotere (Docetaxel) Prods. Liability Litig., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130339 (E.D. La. Aug. 5,…
Yes, Plaintiffs, Medical Records are Necessary!
Plaintiffs in mass tort drug and device litigation do not like to focus on the individual cases. They like to amass the individual cases. They like to file the individual cases. But as we see all too often those filings tend to be indiscriminate and without the benefit of proper early vetting. That is what…
Guest Post – Michigan Product Liability Law: Retroactivity of New Law and Primer
Today’s guest post is by Sherry Knutson and Brenda Sweet of Tucker Ellis, and concerns the recently passed legislative repeal of a Michigan statute that, for several decades had effectively immunized prescription drugs from ordinary product liability actions under Michigan law. For background, here’s a prior blogpost that focused on the now-repealed statute. As…