It more or less came out of nowhere, but we’re now watching what’s going on in the Martinez v. Coloplast Corp., No. 2:18-CV-220-JTM-JEM (N.D. Ind.), pelvic mesh case. Recently, we’ve come across a number of interesting, and generally favorable, Fed. R. Civ. P. 702 expert gatekeeping decisions bearing that caption, as Martinez approaches trial
Today’s guest post is by Courtland Chillingworth, here at Reed Smith. His timely post concerns an excellent decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court from December, 2021 – a decision that we, frankly, missed initially. As readers can tell from what follows, this decision was good enough that, had we not been asleep at
Today’s case originated in the pelvic mesh MDL pending in the Southern District of West Virginia. Approximately one year ago, the matter was transferred to plaintiff’s home jurisdiction in Florida. Accompanying the case upon transfer was defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment on four of plaintiff’s claims. Plaintiff abandoned three of those claims (strict liability
We have been consistently critical of the MDL system for encouraging judges presiding over such massive aggregations to manipulate the applicable law to create settlement pressure on defendants. We’ve seen that with federal preemption, willingness to create novel state-law causes of action, choice of law, and trial consolidation of multiple plaintiffs.
Today’s case, Knudsen v. Ethicon, Inc., 2021 WL 390825 (M.D. Fla. 2021), involves product-liability claims against a surgical-mesh manufacturer. In a short decision, the court dismissed manufacturing-defect and implied-warranty claims as inadequately pleaded under Michigan law. Although not fully developed, the court’s reasons for dismissing the claims exhibit both insight into manufacturing-defect claims and