Over three years ago (an eon in blogging time) we urged our readers – particularly those of you who are in-house – to consider joining the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”). We believed then, and continue to believe, that PLAC membership helps pharmaceutical and medical device defendants litigate complex matters smarter and more efficiently, because
This post is mostly directed to our in-house readership, although you out-house folks can feel free to pass along what we say to your clients.
Our point today is to urge drug/device companies who aren’t members of the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”) to join. Annual membership in PLAC costs $6500, which is a pittance compared to the amount of a single verdict – heck, a single settlement – in a significant product case. It’s less than a third of the cost that PLAC pays (and it only pays bargain-basement prices to start with) to file a single brief.
PLAC is not an industry group, it’s a topical group, and its topic is product liability. Its primary function is to file amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in appellate cases that are likely to have a significant impact on product liability litigation. Those are mostly (but not always) product liability cases.
Bexis has sat on PLAC’s nationwide case selection committee for over a decade now. He knows what PLAC does and how it helps his clients – and similarly situated product liability defendants everywhere.
How would your company’s litigation be without the learned intermediary rule? In recent years, PLAC has filed amicus briefs supporting adoption of the rule in the Supreme Courts of Kentucky, Georgia, Connecticut, and Texas (at least). Unfortunately, nobody told PLAC about West Virginia.
How would your company’s litigation be without Daubert? PLAC helped invent Daubert, and because it’s a topic group, not an interest group, it’s been in all the Supreme Court’s Daubert decisions – whether the product is a drug, or a tire, or something else. PLAC has even filed in criminal cases (the validity of drug-sniffing dog evidence), where significant Daubert issues were raised. PLAC has been in state court expert testimony cases, too – fighting the good fight – whether the product is benzene . . . or Doritos.Continue Reading Why Drug/Device Manufacturers Should Join PLAC
Anyone who reads this blog knows that we do drugs.
But we do civil rights, too (at least in certain contexts, where the representations don’t create positional conflicts for our firms).
Herrmann recently filed an amicus curiae brief (link here) on behalf of Black Cops Against Police Brutality in the U.S. Supreme Court
A confession: There wasn’t supposed to be a Part II to this post.
When we posted our earlier users guide to the Levine defense amicus briefs, we thought we had included everything – we really did.
Shows what we know.
It seems our “good ol’ boys” approach to collecting the defense amicus briefs had a
It’s been said that the third time’s the charm. Maybe that means that we’ll get it right this time.
Anyway, as regular readers of this blog know, Wyeth filed its principal merits brief in Wyeth v. Levine early last week. As night follows day, that means that all defense amicus briefs are due a
The first wave of defense briefing is now complete in Warner-Lambert v. Kent. Like we did with the Riegel briefs, we thought our readers would like a guided tour. Now, the preemption issues in Kent are a little (OK, a lot) different than in Riegel – implied versus express; drug versus medical device
The Solicitor General, on behalf of the FDA, has recently filed amicus briefs in both the Riegel v. Medtronic and Warner-Lambert v. Kent (formerly Desiano) Supreme Court preemption cases. We’re doing a separate post on Riegel, but we did this one first because it’s more in the nature of “breaking news” – it
The Supreme Court briefing is now complete in Riegel v. Medtronic. For preemption wonks like us, that’s sort of like being a kid in a candy store – so we’ve taken a good look at what have to be the best and most state of the art defense preemption arguments around for those of