This post is from the Reed Smith side of the blog only.
Yesterday was National Punctuation Day; it is a good time to administer a semi-colonic to turgid prose. Today we apply an exclamation mark to our unhappiness with judges whose choice of law principles seem not so, er, principled.
Last Thursday, Bexis commented on
This post is solely the product of the Reed Smith side of the Blog.
Readers may recall that a couple years ago we proposed reworking the federal multi-district litigation statute, 28 U.S.C.A. §1407, in a variety of ways. Simultaneously, some of us have been working with Lawyers for Civil Justice to attempt MDL change through
It’s been a long road. Well after product liability litigation over Accutane and inflammatory bowel disease (“IBD”) had been thoroughly debunked everywhere else in the nation, such litigation lived on in New Jersey – for year after interminable year. First, a number of trials occurred, but literally every verdict for the plaintiffs was reversed on
It can sometimes be difficult for us here at the DDL Blog to address “mixed bag” cases. We are quite clear that we are a defense side blog. Love us or hate us – we don’t pull punches. We hoard and covet preemption and learned intermediary wins and treat each one like the gem that
Once again we find ourselves in the position of creating new defenses to a novel, plaintiff-side cause of action. This time, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about innovator liability – the theory that would hold branded manufacturers liable for injuries allegedly caused by the ingestion of (preemption-immune) generic drugs on some kind of
This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.
While the recent Pennsylvania Superior Court Risperdal decision is not a defense victory, it is certainly not as favorable for plaintiffs as they are making it out to be. While several issues were presented for appeal in Stange v. Janssen Pharms., Inc., 2018 Pa.
Interestingly, it’s a case that is almost a year old that has us thinking about litigation tourism post Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017). We know that plaintiffs’ forum shopping gamesmanship isn’t over. It’s just gotten a lot more difficult now that the Supreme Court has said non-resident plaintiffs
We remember how, shortly after the atrocious decision in Johnson & Johnson v. Karl, 647 S.E.2d 899 (W. Va. 2007), rejecting altogether the learned intermediary rule, litigation tourists visiting West Virginia argued that Karl represented that state’s “public policy” and therefore the learned intermediary rule could not apply even to their out-of-state cases under
We thought we understood statutes of limitations and choice-of-law rules in New Jersey. Until yesterday. That was when we read the New Jersey Supreme Court’s opinion in McCarrell v. Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc., No. 076524, 2017 WL 344449 (N.J. Jan. 24, 2017), which unhinged that state’s statute of limitations and choice-of-law jurisprudence from its own precedent and placed statutes of limitations in a special class without much explanation. And the court did all of this for the stated purpose of preserving plaintiffs’ claims and not “discriminating” against an out-of-state plaintiff’s ability to sue a New Jersey company in New Jersey, after the suit would be barred in the plaintiff’s home state.
How did we get here? Well, this is a New Jersey Accutane case, which tells you that it was contentious, as most things seem to be in that multi-county proceeding. Other than that, the facts in McCarrell are fairly typical—an out-of-state plaintiff (in this case a fellow from Alabama) who was prescribed a drug in his home state, used the drug in his home state, experienced alleged complications in his home state, and received medical treatment in his home state sued the drug’s manufacturer where the company is incorporated—in this case, New Jersey. McCarrell, at *3.
The rub in McCarrell was that the plaintiff’s claim was time barred under Alabama’s statute of limitations, but not under New Jersey’s statute of limitations, which includes a discovery rule. The choice of law therefore determined the outcome, which led the parties to contest the issue hotly in the trial court, the intermediate appellate court, and eventually the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Each court applied different rules, which is why this case is so interesting and why the Supreme Court’s opinion is so odd. We have long understood that the choice of forum does not determine the applicable substantive law. Sure, the forum’s procedural law applies, but the substantive law is determined by applying the forum state’s choice-of-law rules.
Last week, along with many of you, we attended the ACI Drug and Medical Device Conference in New York City. The quality of the presentations was uniformly high, and the collegiality and camaraderie were welcome, refreshing, and a lot of fun. There was plenty to drink. There was lots of food. Oh, and we got to see Hamilton! We should preface our comments by pointing out that we were skeptics – we knew how pricey (really, really pricey) tickets are, and we weren’t even positive we would enjoy this immensely innovative rap musical. To wit, one of our best beloved musicals of recent years was the wonderful, if short-lived, revival of Finian’s Rainbow that played the Great White Way a couple of years ago. We go for the traditional stuff, and had neither resources nor plans to spring for Hamilton.
But we got very lucky. A generous friend had bought four tickets a full year earlier in anticipation of the annual conference. And there was a last-minute cancellation. And we got to go. And it was worth all of the hype (and all of the money, if you have it). We enjoyed it so much that we came home and researched ticket availability to return with the Drug and Device Law Long-Suffering Companion. Tickets are on sale for next year, and we thought that we could avoid the crazy street prices by planning way ahead. Not so – even this far in advance, tickets (from official ticket sources, not ticket agencies) are way out of the reach of normal consumers. Sometimes, the early bird does not get the worm (or the greatest financial benefit).
And, with just a bit of creativity, we can glean the same message (among others) from today’s case. Dobbs v. DePuy Orthopedics, — F.3d —, 2016 WL 7015648 (Seventh Cir. Dec. 1, 2016), is an appeal of an attorney’s fee decision from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. (We’ll explain how it got there in a minute.) The plaintiff/appellant had direct-filed a product liability claim in the Hip Implant MDL in the Northern District of Ohio. Believing that the promised compensation was too low, he opted out of the global settlement and fired his lawyers, who had advised him to accept the global settlement, which included a 35% attorneys’ fee. (The global settlement provided one level of payment for unrepresented plaintiffs, and a second level, 35% higher, for represented plaintiffs.)
Less than two months after his lawyers withdrew their appearance, the plaintiff accepted the global settlement. Because he was considered “represented” for purposes of the settlement, he was paid the larger amount. (Not clear why he was considered “represented” when his lawyers had been fired.) His former lawyers asserted a lien on the award and sought to recover attorney’s fees. The MDL judge tried unsuccessfully to mediate the fee dispute in the Northern District of Ohio then transferred the case to the Northern District of Illinois, where the case would have been filed if the MDL had not been pending.