Happy Valentine’s Day. Today’s decision is about a rather un-romantic topic—holding companies. But that got us thinking about a lesser-known band out of San Francisco called Big Brother and the Holding Company. One of America’s most iconic vocalists got her start with the band. Big Brother and the Holding Company’s second album, Cheap Thrills, reached
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
This post is from the non-Reed Smith, non-Dechert, and non-Holland & Knight side of the blog.
We have covered the ranitidine litigation before. As we explained in prior posts (including here and here), plaintiffs allege that ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac, breaks down into N-Nitrosodimethylamine (“NDMA”), particularly at higher temperatures. NDMA is a known carcinogen and a ubiquitous substance present in the environment and in all manner of foods including bacon, beer, and cheese. Readers will remember that in a sweeping, 341-page opinion, the MDL court cut the head off the federal Zantac litigation by excluding plaintiffs’ experts. But other parts of the snake keep slithering. Continue Reading Delaware Zantac Court Fails to Keep the Gate
As a defense lawyer, one grows accustomed to clear judicial days on which the state court can foresee forever. See Thing v. La Chusa, 48 Cal. 3d 644, 668 (1989). On those clear judicial days, when the court catches a glimpse of the possibility of harm shimmering off in the distance, one can be
We have been reporting on third party payer/payor (“TPP”) litigation for a long time. This category covers a range of causes of action and allegations but boils down to boils down to insurance companies or other entities trying to recover amounts they paid for patients to receive medical products because the manufacturers or sellers
In today’s case, Chapman v. AstraZeneca, a Delaware state court granted summary judgment to the defendant pharmaceutical manufacturer after excluding the plaintiff’s causation expert under Delaware Rule of Evidence 702 because the expert’s opinion was not “stated in terms of medical probability.”
The plaintiff claimed that the defendant’s proton pump inhibitor, a class of
There’s more than one way to cook an egg. And, there’s more than one way to dismiss a case. In Bennett v. Teva, the district court decision was based on preemption. The Third Circuit took a different route basing their dismissal on TwIqbal. While we would have preferred an appellate win on preemption
For the second time in three weeks a court has denied an injunction that would have compelled a hospital to administer ivermectin to a patient seriously ill with COVID-19. We previously reported on the first of those decisions, Smith v. West Chester Hosp., LLC, 2021 WL 4129083 (Ohio Com. Pl. 2021). Today we report
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