Having clerked for a federal district judge and cut our litigation teeth in MDLs, federal court practice has burrowed deep. When we think of procedural issues, our brains reflexively think in FRCP terms, and sometimes in state court the mental shift takes a beat.
Most of the time, it is a pretty short beat. Sometimes
Today’s guest post comes from three Reed Smith colleagues and fellow European Union Product Liability Directive nerds, Jamie Lanphear, Greg Speier, and Wim Vandenberghe. As always, our guest posters get all the cheers for their work along with any jeers, though those are hardly likely.
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The Blog has been sounding the
If you are a regular blog reader, you may have seen some of our prior posts about the new Product Liability Directive adopted by the European Union and going into force this December.
Two weeks ago, we had the pleasure of Co-Chairing the inaugural forum on Life Sciences Product Liability Europe in Brussels
Here in the United States, Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ) encourages lawyers to Ask About TPLF, also known as third party litigation funding.
LCJ and others are advocating for an addition to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that would require litigants to disclose the involvement of litigation funders in cases, just like
December 9, 2026? What is that about?
Well, December 9, 2026 is the deadline for each member nation within the European Union to have incorporated the EU’s new Product Liability Directive (“PLD”) into their own national laws. In key markets like Germany, that work is well underway.
Not every EU member state will meet
Today’s guest post is by Reed Smith‘s Jamie Lanphear. Like Bexis, she follows tech issues as they apply to product liability litigation. In this post she discusses a pro-plaintiff piece of legislation recently introduced in Congress that would overturn the current majority rule that electronic data is not considered a “product” for purposes
Today’s guest post is from Jamie Lanphear and Daniel Kadar, both of Reed Smith, who follow product liability events in Europe closely. They are discussing the implications of recent changes on the availability of attorney/client and work product privileges—called “legal professional privilege” in Europe—not only in Europe itself, but how European restrictions might find their way back across the pond to parallel litigation in the United States. As always our guest posters are 100% deserving of all praise (and any blame) from their posts.
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If you’ve ever found yourself grumbling about the breadth of U.S. discovery, you’re not alone. For U.S. lawyers, turning over reams of company documents is a familiar—if unwelcome—part of litigation. For most of our European colleagues outside of the UK, however, the idea of broad, adversarial discovery has generally not been a concern. That’s likely about to change. The EU’s new Product Liability Directive (PLD), which the blog has previously covered here, here, here, and here will expand disclosure obligations in product liability matters across the EU, and the implications for legal privilege—especially for in-house and U.S. counsel—are significant.
Continue Reading Guest Post – The New EU Product Liability Directive: More Disclosure, More Risk for Privileged Communications
Today we have a guest post on some recent developments on whether strict liability applies to software, apps, artificial intelligence, and other forms of electronic data, which depends, as this 50-state survey addresses, on whether such intangible items meet the common-law definition of “product.” It is by Reed Smith attorneys (and repeat guest posters) Mildred
Today’s guest post comes from our Reed Smith colleague Jamie Lanphear on a topic near and dear to the Blog’s heart: The new EU Product Liability Directive. As always, our guest posters deserve 100% of the credit, and any blame, for their posts. But, also as usual, our guest posters deliver the goods, so we
In this, the Year of Our Lord 2025, that title could apply to so, so, so many things. Soooooo many things.
But this is the Drug and Device Law Blog, product liability is our niche, and what we are referring to is the new, 2024 European Union Product Liability Directive (the “PLD”), also known as