Famous (and infamous) Illinois trial lawyer Clarence Darrow once said that he never wished a man dead, but had occasionally read some obituaries with great satisfaction. (That same quote is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain.)
We’re no Darrow. We’ve never saved a client from capital punishment, or discredited a former presidential candidate in a
A little over a year ago, the Supreme Court heard argument in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eight Judicial District Court, 141 S.Ct. 1017 (2021) regarding an issue of personal jurisdiction. At that time, we tried our hand at reading the tea leaves and made this prediction about how the Ford Motor decision might adversely
This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog
Not long ago, one of our co-bloggers fielded some correspondence that, distilled from its abundant rhetoric, seemed to criticize a blog post for its defense-leaning bias. Given this, we hasten to reiterate, before we begin today’s post, that this is a defense blog. We are
The Xarelto personal injury claims settled in 2019 after six bellwether trials all ended with defense verdicts. What remained, until now, were several third-party payor (health insurers, “TPPs”) actions that have been dormant for almost six years. Despite the passage of time, the motions before the court in 2021 were to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(6)
Before we turn to today’s case, a quick update: when last we spoke, we were about to board a plane for Peoria – our first work trip in sixteen months. We were excited about it. We regret to report that we stepped out of the plane into something resembling a weird post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie.
We are not going to beat around the bush today. When we see a “prediction” of an “expansion” of state law by a federal court, we have only one question. What about Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938)? That should have been a front and center question for the court
Critics have been known to accuse us of being too hard on product liability plaintiffs and too forgiving of defendants who develop medical products. We all have our biases, especially after many collective decades of representing the latter group, but we do think the table is often tilted in favor of the former group. One
The heat waves of summer haven’t been gone long enough for those of us in the North East to be longing for 90° days anytime soon. But we have no problem reaching back to the dog days of summer for today’s decision. Which got us thinking, what are the dog days of summer? Days that
A couple of weeks ago, we walked around the Drug and Device Law Suburban Abode with a critical eye. The Abode was built the same year we were built, and we were struck by its similar cries for invasive cosmetic help. As a stopgap, we arranged to have the exterior painted, a finger in the
Plaintiffs often prefer to be in state court, and when we first started doing a lot of product liability litigation way back when, we were struck by how much time and effort plaintiffs spent trying to evade federal jurisdiction and litigating motions to remand to state court. We don’t wonder so much anymore. Jaded, we