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We’ve all heard that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Some of us describe it as “the rule of poultry equivalents.” However you phrase it, we’ve always thought that if a defendant’s insurance is routinely discoverable, a plaintiff’s litigation financing agreement should be as well. Today’s decision from Delaware, Burkhart v. Genworth Financial, Inc., 2024 WL 3888109 (Del. Ch. Aug. 21, 2024), isn’t a pharmaceutical or medical device case, but it is the fourth decision out of the Delaware state courts holding that a plaintiff’s litigation funding agreement is discoverable.  The decision adds to some of the positive case law and local rules related to litigation funding that we’ve addressed here, here and here.  Continue Reading Litigation Funding Agreements Discoverable in Delaware

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We have spilled a good deal of ink on the Valsartan MDL.  The back-end of the blog says 18 posts (and counting) already reference Valsartan.  Why so many?  Because they usually are so bad.  Today’s post is more of the same.  Hence the deep sigh.

Today’s Valsartan opinion, In re Valsartan, Losartan, & Irbesartan Products

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Some things were never meant to go together.  Oil and water.  Ice cream and ketchup.  Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort (although fans of the books will quickly point out that Boy Who Lived was actually linked inextricably to his arch enemy).  Picnics and honey bees.  Elected officials and the power to borrow money.  You get

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We continue to scratch our heads over consumer class actions seeking monetary compensation when the customers received exactly what they paid for.  We see them from time to time in the pharmaceutical space, where patients claim monetary compensation even though the prescription drugs they used worked like they were supposed to with no adverse reactions. 

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We never heard the term “slack fill” before we started writing for this blog, but it seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. We enjoyed a podcast from NPR’s Planet Money the other day discussing slack fill in black pepper containers, and we blogged on the FDA’s regulation of slack fill a little more than a year ago.  We have to admit, the words are fun to say.  “Slack fill.”  They snap off your tongue with a certain percussive elegance.  Sort of like “Severus Snape.”  Or “Coco Crisp,” who is an actual person, a switch-hitting outfielder currently vying for a World Series crown with the Cleveland Indians.  (Coco Crisp, whose given name is Covelli Crisp, broke into the big leagues with the Indians in 2002, and he returned to Cleveland just a few months ago after spending six-and-a-half seasons leading off for our beloved Oakland Athletics.  His change from the white cleats to black is a big loss for Oakland and, if the Indians beat the Cubs, a bigger win for Coco.  But we digress.)

For those who missed our prior post on slack fill, the term refers to empty space, like the extra air in a bag of chips. The variant “nonfunctional slack fill” refers to pointless empty space.  It’s just there, serving no purpose, just like a recent slack fill class action that recently met its demise in the Eastern District of New York, Fermin v. Pfizer, Inc., No. 15-cv-2133, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144851 (E.D.N.Y. Oct. 18, 2016).  In Fermin, the plaintiffs’ alleged that they were “tricked” into purchasing ibuprofen because the containers were too big. Id. at *1.  Never mind that the labels prominently and accurately stated exactly what was in the bottles, down to the number of pills.  These plaintiffs alleged that the “excessive empty space” in the packaging misled them into purchasing the product, and they purported to represent a class of purchasers under the consumer laws of multiple states. Id.Continue Reading “Slack Fill” Class Action Is Empty Space