Today’s post is from the Zimmer hip prothesis MDL, which appears to be winding down and which we’ve blogged about here. It’s a Rule 702 decision that excluded a treating surgeon who offered unsupported expert opinions about an alleged product defect. In re: Zimmer M/L Taper Hip Prosthesis Prods. Liab. Litig., 2026 WL
As we have said before, the Blog is unabashedly pro-science. There is a difference between good science and bad science, and reliance on the latter to make any important decision—be it in everyday life, litigation, or public policy—is not smart. We are also unabashedly in favor of strict application of the Rules of Evidence
This post is not from the Reed Smith or Dechert sides of the blog.
We previously posted about the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling that proper application of Delaware Rule 702 required the exclusion of plaintiffs’ general causation experts in the Zantac litigation. Since then, we’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Last week, it dropped with a resounding boom. Today’s decision applied the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling and dismissed over 80,000 cases. In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Litig., No. N22C-090101, 2026 WL 1009008 (Del. Super. Apr. 14, 2026).
The decision focuses on the question of which plaintiffs are bound by the exclusion of the plaintiffs’ general causation experts. The court denied plaintiffs leave to supplement their expert reports on December 1, 2025, and the defense argued that all plaintiffs with cases filed before December 1, 2025, are bound by the ruling. Recognizing that the litigation was about to be eviscerated, plaintiffs made a number of desperate arguments.
Continue Reading No Mulligans in Delaware – Exclusion of Plaintiffs’ General Causation Experts Results in Dismissal of 80,000 Zantac Cases
It must be bad plaintiff lawyer week here at the Drug and Device Law Blog. Yesterday, we brought you a review of The Pain Brokers (One Signal Publishers 2026) and the sordid tale of ginned-up damages in the vaginal mesh litigation.
Today we bring you The American Tort Reform Association’s 2026 report, The Junk
Today’s guest post is from Nick Dellefave, an up and coming Holland & Knight litigator. The Blog has rolled out a few posts on the latest edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. Nick adds to this opus with a dive into the intersection between scientific evidence, the role of trial judges
Yesterday we did our annual best of/worst of CLE, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Best and Worst Drug/Medical Device and Vaccine Decisions of 2025”. It was good fun for us presenters and hopefully at least mildly educational and entertaining for the audience. (If you missed it, the video replay will be available
Since it was published in 2011, the third edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual for Scientific Evidence has been the go-to guide for federal judges seeking to sort out scientific testimony, and a major source of non-precedential authority for both sides when arguing motions under Fed. R. Evid. 702. 2011, however, was fifteen
This “just desserts” story caught our eyes earlier this year – a hot-shot expert witness, on artificial intelligence, no less, got caught with his own hand in the AI cookie jar. As a result, his credibility was destroyed, and his testimony was excluded. The litigation leading to Kohls v. Ellison, 2025 WL 66514 (D.
Back in April, we pondered whether the new judge in the Valsartan MDL would change things for the better. In contrast to the Zantac MDL, which was established a year later and has proceeded on a very similar contamination theory, the first several years of the Valsartan MDL saw a bunch of bad rulings on
Our readership is tuned into current events and stays up to date on significant drug and device litigation. We bet no one missed that Taylor and Travis are getting married, or that a college football game being hyped as the biggest regular season game in at least a decade (Texas v. Ohio St.) happens tomorrow. We also bet that the blog’s readers know what GLP-1 inhibitors are—medications developed for diabetes and now widely prescribed for weight loss. At least one poll estimated that 12% of the U.S. population has taken a GLP-1 medication.
About a year ago, we posted about the successful efforts of the defendants in the GLP-1 MDL to have the court, rather than permitting unfettered discovery at the outset, instead tee-up certain “cross-cutting” issues that would impact the scope of the MDL. Yesterday we posted about the MDL court’s ruling on preemption of the plaintiffs’ design defect claims. Today we address a separate decision addressing the admissibility of expert testimony on a cross-cutting issue. In re Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 3094, 2025 WL 2396801 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 15, 2025).
Continue Reading Trimming Down the GLP-1 MDL