For our friends practicing in the Sunshine State, we want to highlight new rules amendments which took effect on January 1, 2025. Most notably, Florida joins states around the country adopting the proportionality language from Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1). See Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.280(c).Continue Reading New Proportionality Language for Florida Rules
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Today we discuss two discovery orders from a case in the Northern District of California, Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc. In this case, Plaintiff, a California resident, alleged that she was burned by a skin treatment she received in Taiwan with the Thermage CPT device manufactured by Defendant. Plaintiff sought expansive discovery from Defendant while at the same time trying to restrict discovery plainly relevant to her own claims for her damages. The court didn’t buy it.Continue Reading Solid Discovery Orders in the Northern District of California
They say that in California everybody’s a star. Or maybe, in today’s terms, everybody’s an influencer, has social media, a blog, or—in this case—an autobiography. Today we discuss a discovery dispute in a California federal court that is somewhat unique, but that raises issues we see every day in drug and device cases. Continue Reading Lifestyle Discovery Fair Game Where Plaintiff Puts Quality of Life at Issue
This is my first post as a new member of the Drug & Device Law team. Like many of you, I’ve been a consistent reader of the blog for years and I rely on it regularly. I remember talking with Jim Beck and Mark Herrmann many years ago when the blog was just getting started (pretty sure it was 2006). Now here we are. I’m a partner with Butler Snow LLP’s Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Healthcare practice, and I’ve focused my practice on mass torts for almost my entire career. I’m excited about contributing to the blog and welcome any comments. Now on to business.
MDL discovery is inevitably burdensome on defendants, and the challenges defendants face in attempting to limit the scope of MDL discovery are exponentially more difficult than in single plaintiff cases. Throw a few hundred cases together in an MDL, and courts seem much more willing to view the scope of permissible discovery through a vastly broader lens. So we read with interest decisions that limit discovery, place some of the burden on the plaintiffs, or—even better—implement cost shifting and require the plaintiffs to pay for some or all of what they seek in discovery.Continue Reading Cost Shifting in the Tasigna MDL
The next line of the song goes . . . But if you try sometimes you might find, You get what you need. We like the line. We like the song. We like The Stones. Maybe the Federal Rules Advisory Committee was listening to the tune in 2015 when it decided proportionality needed to be
Just two weeks ago, we largely praised an MDL court’s handling of sanctions for a plaintiff’s stonewalling in response to discovery obligations, but thought the plaintiff got off pretty light for some really egregious conduct. Today, we report on a circuit court’s affirmance of discovery sanctions against a plaintiff counsel’s conduct for being overly aggressive
The cases we typically write about focus on events after medical products have made their way through the applicable regulatory process and been marketed in the United States. The marketed product is used, people claim to have been injured by it, and they sue the manufacturer under various product liability theories. Often, in the course