Hardly a week goes by when we don’t blow a kiss or two at Twombly/Iqbal. Frankly, we can’t understand why everyone doesn’t share our enthusiasm. What’s wrong with requiring plausibility before subjecting someone to the monetary, stress, and reputational expenses of litigation? It’s enormously frustrating when courts express hostility to Twombly/Iqbal. Sometimes it’s even worse when courts pretend to follow Twombly/Iqbal but then apply them in such (more…)

Less than a month ago we posted about a good no-remand decision out of the Southern District of New York, where the court found that a fraudulent joinder could not defeat diversity jurisdiction. We went out of our way to contrast that SDNY decision with the usual doings in the Southern District of Illinois, where too many decisions applied tests that allowed plaintiffs to join local defendants who could never-ever be found liable. The invariable result (more…)

We’ve been following with interest the recent activities in the Zyprexa litigation, since it looks like the plaintiffs in this batch of cases are dropping like flies. We admit, though, that we haven’t been particularly complete about those developments, since our prior posts describe only five summary judgment grants.

We’re not sure whether the Zyprexa summary judgments are drawn from some pre-selected pool of plaintiffs (more…)

Back in January, we put up a short post noting the filing of a petition for extraordinary (“King’s Bench”) review in the case of Commonwealth v. Janssen Pharmaceutica, Inc., No 0108002818 (Pa. C.P. Phila. Co.). It’s a case involving alleged off-label promotion of Risperdal, a widely prescribed “atypical” anti-psychotic medication. We posted a copy of the petition challenging the state’s decision (more…)