Another year bites the dust. We have just about made it through 2023, and while we have compiled our annual top ten best prescription medical product liability litigation decisions, we have the same sense with these as we did with last week’s bottom ten – in 2023 the favorable (as well as unfavorable) results from
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Good Venue Ruling in Missouri, With a Word of Caution on Timeliness
By Michelle Yeary on
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…
Sixth Circuit Reverses Remand of Coal Respirator Case, Holding CAFA Applies
By Stephen McConnell on
Today’s case, Adams v. 3M Company, 2023 WL 2997420 (6th Cir. April 19, 2023), is not, strictly speaking, a drug or device case, but it is about constraining plaintiff lawyer attempts to aggregate litigation. That issue is near and dear to our flinty, defense-hack hearts. We never forego a chance to quote our old…
Unusual Indictment of MDL Practices
By Eric Alexander on
We have not been terribly shy in voicing our concerns over certain practices we see in drug and device MDLs. Some of these concerns are directed to plaintiff lawyers, some to the judges overseeing the MDLs, and some to both. For instance, we think many MDL judges are far too lenient in allowing plaintiffs…
N.D. Cal. Severs Singulair Plaintiff Cases
By Stephen McConnell on
From the defense perspective, the worst thing about a mass tort is that it is so … massive. The more the merrier? No way. The presence of multiple plaintiffs signals to the jury that something must be wrong with the product. Don’t believe us? We think there is research to support our dislike of consolidation…
Taxotere MDL Court Excuses Nearly-Five-Year Delay in Serving Complaints
By Rachel B. Weil on
We report, before we discuss today’s case, that we write in a state of high anticipation. Regular readers of this blog may recall that we are huge dog show fans (we have had the same seats to the annual Westminster Kennel Club show – the one that is on TV – for 25 years). We…
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…
No Consolidated Trial in Injectafer Litigation in E.D.Pa.
By Bexis on
This is actually Rachel Weil’s post, but she is having password problems, so Bexis is doing the actual posting
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We spent last weekend in a shore house with extended family members (all vaccinated, of course) gathered to celebrate a cousin’s milestone birthday. Since we had last gathered, babies had been born, the family matriarch…
Useful Law Review Article on State MDL Practice
By Bexis on
There is a lot of scholarship and other material out there on issues having to do with federal multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) practice. See, e.g., footnote three, in the article below. But state MDL equivalents? Not so much. The Blog’s co-founder wrote a book about this a while ago, see Herrmann, et al.,…
Multi-Plaintiff Trial Issue at the Supreme Court
By Bexis on
We’ve griped about multi-plaintiff consolidated trials for years on this blog, both generally, and in the specific context of prescription medical product liability litigation. Now the issue is before the Supreme Court in one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice that we’ve seen – and several of us practice in Philadelphia – a…