We’ve bloggedseveraltimesbefore about the many deficiencies of third-party payor class actions for purely economic – and usually invented – loss. In all but a few courtrooms, such claims have been dismissed. Yesterday, it happened again, in Southern Illinois Laborers’ and Employers Health and Welfare Fund v. Pfizer Inc., Civ. A. No. 08 CV 5175 (KMW) (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2009). We’re too busy right now to put a full post about it, and (more…)

We posted earlier this month about Joseph v. Baxter, in which Judge James Carr (of the Northern District of Ohio) severed and remanded claims against the non-diverse health care providers to create diversity as to the drug company defendant.

We raised a few questions at the end of that post, asking, among other things, whether the holding was limited to situations where (1) the drug company removed before it was aware that health care providers (more…)

We’ve been doing some research in anticipation of the upcoming ALI meeting at which the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation will be voted on (we hope ALI members interested in class actions and the like will come out, debate the issues, and vote), and in the spirit of cross-fertilization, we thought we’d share it with our readers. The only question we have is the format. We were impressed with reader response we had to the 50-state (more…)

is a Counsel resident in the Philadelphia office of Dechert LLP. He is the author of, among other things, Drug and Medical Device Product Liability Handbook (2004) (with Anthony Vale). He can be reached at james.beck@dechert.com.
is a partner resident in the Chicago office of Jones Day. He is the author of, among other things,
(2006), and Statewide Coordinated Proceedings: State Court Analogues to the Federal MDL Process (2d rev. ed. 2004) (more…)