We want to start by emphasizing the word restrictions. The law at issue in West Virginia was not a ban on plaintiff lawyer advertising, nor could it be. Since Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977), the First Amendment’s protection of truthful and non-misleading commercial speech extends to lawyers. Lawyers,
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Not the Best Wisconsin Law Decision We’ve Ever Seen
By Bexis on
A few years ago we did a couple of posts about the learned intermediary decision that arose from the Zimmer Nexgen Knee Implant MDL, and was subsequently affirmed by the Seventh Circuit Court of appeals. We designated the opinion In re Zimmer Nexgen Knee Implant Products Liability Litigation, 218 F. Supp. 3d 700 (N.D.…
We Said It Before; We’ll Say It Again – Drug/Device Companies Should Join PLAC
By Bexis on
We return to a theme we’ve repeated twice before, in 2011 and in 2014 – that in addition to industry-specific groups, manufacturers of prescription medical products should definitely consider joining the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”). We continue to believe that PLAC membership helps pharmaceutical and medical device defendants litigate stronger (through inter-industry cooperation on…
We Report on FDA-Based Failure-To-Report Claims – A Fifty-State Survey (Part 3)
By Bexis on
Now that all three parts of our 50-state survey examining the state of state law concerning allegations that a defendant can state a common-law cause of action where the allegedly liability creating conduct is failure to make a statutorily mandated report to a governmental agency has been published, we have consolidated all fifty states under…
We Report on FDA-Based Failure-To-Report Claims – A Fifty-State Survey (Part 2)
By Bexis on
Now that all three parts of our 50-state survey examining the state of state law concerning allegations that a defendant can state a common-law cause of action where the allegedly liability creating conduct is failure to make a statutorily mandated report to a governmental agency has been published, we have consolidated all fifty states under…
We Report on FDA-Based Failure-To-Report Claims – A Fifty-State Survey
By Bexis on
Not too long ago we discussed the decision in In re Allergan Biocell Textured Breast Implant Products Liability Litigation, 537 F. Supp.3d 679 (D.N.J. 2021) (“TBI”). TBI addressed quite a few topics, one of which was the first nationwide (or close to it) analysis of whether a given jurisdiction permitted, under state…
Lone Pine Orders Alive and Well in Third Circuit; Enforcement? Not So Much
By Steven Boranian on
We have long endorsed the use of Lone Pine orders as a partial antidote to wasteful mass litigation. The issue is the numbers, large numbers of meritless claims that are parked in a mass proceeding, such as an MDL, where they both strain judicial resources and detract from litigation of claims that have arguable merit. …
Guest Post − Building A Better Bellwether
By Bexis on
Today’s guest post is by the Reed Smith team of Shana E. Russo, Jennifer A. Eppensteiner, and Kathy I. Oviedo. It is about multi-district litigation (“MDL”) practice, and specifically, compares and contrasts various ways of selecting plaintiffs for possible bellwether trials. It also useful in providing links to orders entered in a…
Taxotere Court Dismisses Claims by Former Bellwether Plaintiff Even Though She Did Not Want to be “Singled Out”
By Stephen McConnell on
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…
Ninth Circuit Trims No Injury Class Action Claims
By Bexis on
Purported class actions on behalf of people who haven’t really suffered any injury are one of the banes of our existence. While not limited to California or courts in the Ninth Circuit, some of the worst (most of which we haven’t covered because they are adverse non-drug/device cases) decisions certainly hail from there.
Recently, however…