Lawyers and wannabe lawyers like to use Latin words and phrases without always understanding their original meaning. English, a Germanic language according to the family tree, is peppered with words that are derived from Latin. Being the conglomeration that it is, English includes some words—egregious comes to mind—that now mean the opposite of their Latin
Thanks to our friend Adam Masin for sending us today’s hot-off-the-presses case, and a shout-out to Adam and his colleague Nancy Kelly, both of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, for the great result. We’ll get to that in a moment.
First, we ask your indulgence as we report that our baby is leaving the
We have never been sued in Hawaii. At least not yet. It could be that someday someone will call us to task for eating too much shave ice or using the word “mahalo” incorrectly. But so far we have traversed the Aloha State unscathed by legal exposure. Our favorite Hawaiian island is Kauai, the Garden
When we started seeing a smattering of cases over long-term contraceptive devices used in connection with tubal ligation surgery, we were not surprised. Plaintiff lawyers have targeted a wide range of contraceptive drugs and devices for decades. Commentators beyond this Blog have described how this bent affects contraceptive choice and public health. When we saw
California’s courts have never met a case they did not like. Or, more precisely, they have never met a case over which they would not exercise jurisdiction if arguably supported by the facts, and even when not supported by the facts. We are exaggerating, of course, but not by much. You will recall that the
We’ve blogged about the United States Supreme Court’s pending personal jurisdiction cases before. Well, they pend no longer. Yesterday the Court unanimously (with a couple of concurrences) ruled that resident plaintiffs injured by products originally manufactured and sold elsewhere could sue a nationwide company like Ford – that “purposefully avail[ed] itself of the privilege
As we write this, there is great uncertainty in the country. The intersection of state and federal law is a focus, as is the possibility that one or more of the many recent challenges to how states count votes for the presidential election will end up in the Supreme Court. The tension is palpable, in
We have an update today on a case from Idaho on which we blogged late last year. The issue then was innovator liability, and we gave our enthusiastic stamp of approval to the court’s rejection of “product liability” where the innovator manufacturer neither made nor sold the product that allegedly harmed the plaintiff. As the
For as long as we’ve been practicing law, litigation tourists plaintiffs, from far and wide, have flocked to bring suit in the downstate Illinois counties of Madison and St. Clair, despite their claims having nothing to do with the state of Illinois. Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court – in Essure litigation – recognized that this
California courts continue to find ways to exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants, even when there is little or no dispute that the Constitution and the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court do not permit it. “Resistance” is probably too strong a word, insofar as it calls up images