Our favorite aspect of being a prosecutor was the investigation phase. Snooping is fun. Figuring out what the crook did and how he did it made us feel like Columbo or Mannix. (Surely those references are lost on anyone under 50. Maybe we should have alluded to Poker Face.) Surveillance, telephone records, and bank accounts
”He that violates his oath profanes the divinity of faith itself.” — Cicero.
It might seem unlikely that, long ago, we noticed the above maxim inscribed on the south side of the Los Angeles City Hall while walking to our first jury trial (almost as unlikely as the fact that we were walking in L.A.). It
On the internet, “because reasons” is the default when you don’t have the time or energy to explain why something is correct, but you are sticking with your viewpoint nonetheless.
It is the opposite of what our profession expects from lawyers and the courts: We all are supposed to explain, with crystalline clarity, why our
In our legal world, Lone Pine is not a small California town near the majestic Mt. Whitney and the sobering Manzanar National Historic Site. It is an order directing plaintiffs to come forward with some evidence that they took, or were exposed to, the product they are suing over, and some evidence about their
The unwieldy and sometimes unfair nature of multidistrict litigation has become a recurring theme on the DDL Blog. We have long commented on the “if you build it, they will come” dynamic that leads to hundreds or thousands of cases gathered, filed, and then parked in an MDL—all hoping to do as little
We came across something the other day that we don’t see very often, or really ever. The plaintiff in a medical device case served a request to inspect the two defendants’ manufacturing facilities, claiming that he was entitled to observe the premises where the device was made. Not so fast, said the defendants. And with
Two weeks ago we wrote about a pelvic mesh case that crumbled on remand due to the plaintiff’s failure to depose the implanting physician. The importance of the implanting physician is self-evident. Because the plaintiff bears the burden of proving the elements of torts, including whether a different warning would have prompted the implanter to
There is quite a bit of discussion these days about protocols. Using good judgment in setting how often you should wash your hands, what measures should be in place for a certain type of business to operate, how often to test for infection and/or antibodies, and many other protocols seems like a no-brainer. We will
We’re writing a quick-hit post today on a topic that comes up often in medical device litigation, but rarely results in a court order—what happens when the plaintiffs want an “exemplar” medical device? How do they get one and who pays for it?
We’re not talking here about the medical device that was actually used
We recently gave a talk on things in MDLs that drive us crazy. Discovery is front and center. The asymmetry of discovery is a huge source of unfairness. If plaintiffs have their way, all discovery would be about company conduct, and we’d never get to find out if those 8,000 plaintiffs used the product or