Delaware is having something of a moment in the sun. Although the state’s license plates have long announced it as “The First State,” that refers to being the first to ratify the U.S. Constitution. It is the second smallest in size and sixth smallest in population of the current fifty states. The casual peruser of
This has been an important concept in the gadolinium litigation and it delivered another preemption win in Javens v. GE Healthcare Inc., 2020 WL 2783581 (D. Del. May 29, 2020). The changes being effected (“CBE”) label change process has strict limitations on when it can be used to add or amend warnings without prior
This is a quick-hit post bringing you two first-of-their-kind orders on proving causation in cases alleging inadequate drug or medical device warnings. In orders applying Georgia’s and Delaware’s versions of the learned intermediary doctrine, two different federal courts have held that a plaintiff alleging inadequate warnings cannot meet his or her burden of proving causation
It’s Delaware week here at the DDL Blog. A couple of days ago we brought you a particularly clear-minded order rejecting innovator liability in the First State (so nicknamed because Delaware was the first of the original 13 colonies to ratify the Constitution in 1787), and yesterday we reported on a pair of Delaware orders
There will come a time when there is no such thing as the local radio station. Not only will transmission not occur via radio waves, but there will be nothing local about it. There also may be no banter from the DJ, short for “disc jockey”–a reference to placing flat, round pieces of plastic called
It’s tax week, so expect a lot of cases this week from that wonderful no-tax paradise, Delaware. With light traffic (iffy on I-95, to be sure), one can get from our office to Delaware in under a half hour. That’s a worthwhile trip for buying anything in triple or higher digits. It’s also a worthwhile
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
When we posted about Sikkelee v. Precision Airmotive Corporation, 907 F.3d 701 (3d. Cir. 2018) we thought it should be the end of failure-to-report claims in the Third Circuit. But, since that decision was about an FAA failure-to-report claim, we felt it was
Not long ago we published, as a guest post, a 50-state survey of state tolling statutes that governed whether, and under what circumstances, actions dismissed on a non-merits basis could be refiled notwithstanding the running of the applicable statute of limitations in the interim.
Bexis had never really thought much about these kinds of statutes
We’ve always been against the concept of class action tolling: that merely by filing a class action – the class action does not have to have any merit – a class action lawyer magically stops the running of the statute of limitations for everybody in the class. To us, this gives Fed. R. Civ. P.
From our prior personal jurisdiction posts concerning Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014), and the plaintiff-side dodge of “general jurisdiction by consent,” regular blog readers were aware that one of the few jurisdictions where the consent theory appeared to have some traction was Delaware. Those adverse decisions were based on pre-Bauman Delaware state law, Sternberg v. O’Neil, 550 A.2d 1105 (Del. 1988), which had allowed general jurisdiction by consent.
No longer.
In an asbestos mass tort case, the Delaware Supreme Court has just overruled Sternberg – on the basis that general jurisdiction by consent merely by means of registration to do business is incompatible with Bauman:
We conclude that after [Bauman], it is not tenable to read Delaware‘s registration statutes as Sternberg did. Sternberg[] . . . rested on a view of federal jurisprudence that has now been fundamentally undermined by [Bauman] and its predecessor Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown. . . . Sternberg represented just one plausible way to read a statute that on its face does not refer explicitly to personal jurisdiction, much less to consent to personal jurisdiction.
Genuine Parts Co. v. Cepec, No. 528, 2015, slip op. at 2 (Del. April 18, 2016) (footnote omitted). Thus, “Delaware‘s registration statutes must be read as a requirement that a foreign corporation must appoint a registered agent to accept service of process, but not as a broad consent to personal jurisdiction in any cause of action, however unrelated to the foreign corporation‘s activities in Delaware.” Id. at 3. That means, “[i]n most situations where the foreign corporation does not have its principal place of business in Delaware, that will mean that Delaware cannot exercise general jurisdiction over the foreign corporation.” Id. (footnote omitted).
Continue Reading Breaking News – No General Jurisdiction by Consent in Delaware