We are careful when discussing discovery sanctions, particularly spoliation, for a simple reason. The companies we represent that make medical products tend to have allegations about failing to produce discoverable information in the course of the litigation against them. Indeed, there is a style of litigating against drug and device companies, and other corporate defendants,
Discovery sanctions
Sanctions For An MDL Bellwether Plaintiff’s Discovery Conduct
Stop us if you have heard this before. A novel or movie depicts litigation in which a large corporate defendant is sued for causing a plaintiff or plaintiffs significant injuries through a frivolous or non-beneficial product. In defending the litigation, the corporation and its unscrupulous lawyers hide important documents from the scrappy plaintiff lawyer, who,…
Hip Implant MDL Denies Summary Judgment on Claims of Plaintiffs Who Failed to Preserve Explanted Devices
Regular readers of this blog know that we have a pretty jaded view of many MDLs. Obviously consolidation makes sense, at least on paper, in terms of efficiency and the best use of scarce court resources. But, in practice, many MDLs promote a litigation “mob mentality,” in which the merits of individual cases are not important at the outset and, in the world of “settlement inventories” and “mass settlements,” may never draw the scrutiny of the judge or anyone else. Though we continue to hope that “Lone Pine” orders will burgeon and raise the standards for plaintiffs seeking to fly under the radar and await settlement, many MDLs remain “safe havens” for plaintiffs who can’t satisfy the burden of proving their claims.
And a recent decision from the hip implant MDL does nothing to disturb this reality. In that MDL, a longstanding “Explant Preservation Order” requires preservation of hip implant devices removed from plaintiffs during explant surgeries. The order requires plaintiffs to “make good faith efforts to ensure that [medical facilities] preserve” explanted devices and provides options for plaintiffs’ counsel to claim devices within 60 days of explant or, in the alternative, for the devices to be sent to the defendants. It requires all parties to handle explanted devices in accordance with a written protocol or consistent with “methods and practices accepted by those in the field of inspection and testing of orthopedic devices,” to notify each other of devices in their possession before the date of the order, and to make devices available to each other after inspection and testing. All of this, obviously, ensures that the critical evidence in this product liability MDL is preserved and handled in a fair and consistent manner.
In Marquis v. Biomet, Inc., et al., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28465 (N.D. Ind. Mar. 1, 2017), the defendants moved for summary judgment against six plaintiffs. Five of these plaintiffs had had their devices explanted before they filed suit, or after they filed suit but before their cases were transferred into the MDL, and did not know what happened to their devices after they were explanted. The sixth plaintiff had several revision surgeries. During the first, the femoral head of her hip implant was replaced, and she asked for the explanted femoral head. She explained, “I figured I paid for it. I wanted it.” She kept the femoral head in her closet, didn’t disclose on her fact sheet that she had kept it, and didn’t tell anyone she had it until her deposition. The devices explanted during her subsequent surgeries were not preserved.Continue Reading Hip Implant MDL Denies Summary Judgment on Claims of Plaintiffs Who Failed to Preserve Explanted Devices
Good Things Come in Small Packages: M.D. Fla. Rejects Plaintiff’s Discovery Gotcha Gamesmanship
This is the time of year for Best and Worst lists. Our own lists of the best and worst drug and device law decisions of 2016 will be coming out soon. Meanwhile, we have no doubt that the worst moments in our own day-to-day practice consist in litigating about litigation. That is, whether on offense or defense, it is mind-numbing to fight over, not the merits of the case, but whether some party is complying with the rules of civil procedure.
We said “offense or defense,” but who are we kidding? Discovery in our cases is wildly asymmetrical. Plaintiffs grudgingly sign health record authorizations, while our clients are forced to disgorge millions of documents, at an expense many times over what most defendants in other civil litigations who have already been found liable (of course, our clients have thus far not been found liable for anything) end up paying in total. Producing electronically stored information (ESI) is virtually impossible to get fully right, but plaintiffs ask for, and all too frequently get, a requirement that corporate defendants furnish certificates of completion. Such certificates are not required by any rules. Somehow, overreaching plaintiffs have managed to persuade some courts to take something as silly and unrealistic as the discovery rules and make them even worse. Pretty soon, court hearings devolve into plaintiff lawyers ruefully marching to the lectern to complain about alleged gaps in discovery and demand sanctions. Forget about the fact that this litany of carping is on behalf of an inventory of plaintiffs whose mostly meritless claims go gleefully untested until the defendant waves a white flag and submits to a fairy tale otherwise known as a settlement grid. Apropos of the season, we say humbug.
It is a pleasant surprise when a court calls an end to the discovery gotcha game. That happened last week in Small v. Amgen, Inc., No. 2:12-cv-476-FtM-PAM-MRM (Dec. 14, 2016). We have written on the Small case before. See here, for example. The issue teed up most recently in the Small case was the plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37 for an alleged failure to comply with the court’s omnibus discovery order. The Small court held that “[f]or all its sound and fury … Plaintiffs’ Motion fails – utterly – to identify any actual violation” of the court’s prior orders. That magisterial “utterly” conveys a sense of weariness and frustration. Yes, we know the feeling.Continue Reading Good Things Come in Small Packages: M.D. Fla. Rejects Plaintiff’s Discovery Gotcha Gamesmanship