Under Fed. R. Evid. 9(b), “[i]n alleging fraud or mistake, a party must state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake.” In our sphere, federal courts are quite variable in how they apply this standard when deciding 12(b)(6) motions. In particular, MDLs seem to have an unfortunate habit of allowing general allegations to support
Illinois
Illinois Court Imposes Sanctions for Invalid Precomplaint Discovery
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…
Sometimes the Tea Leaves are Right
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…
Nice Rulings on Motions in Limine in N.D. Illinois Hernia Mesh Case
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…
Lack of Causation Fells Third-Payor Claims in Xarelto MDL
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)…
Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Summary Judgment on Failure-to-Warn and “Voluntary Undertaking” Claims in Programmable Pump Case
MDL Court Predicts Expansion of Illinois Law
Pleading Preemption As A Defense In A Privacy Class Action
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…