Last week we gave you our federal class action denial cheat sheet [cite]. This week we’re posting a similar list of class action denials from state courts. It took some work, but we’ve been able to dig up certification denials from eleven different states. If you’ve got others, send them along.

With the Class Action Fairness Act moving most class action litigation to federal court, there may not be very many new (more…)

Almost from the day this blog was founded, we’ve been arguing that class actions have no place in prescription medical product liability litigation. We’ve put up severalpostscontaininglists of cases to that effect – but none of them were complete (or purported to be).

One of the things that we’ve often thought about doing someday was putting together a truly comprehensive list of all the decisions denying class certification (more…)

This blog welcomes guest posts, particularly by other defense counsel. We’re just as lazy as the next guy.

This is a guest post by John A. Tartaglia III, of the Renzulli Law Firm, on attempts in Congress to strip manufacturers of FDA premarket approved medical device manufacturers of their hard-won preemption defense. He gets all the credit and all the blame for what follows.

Take it away, John:
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(more…)

This just in: The Eighth Circuit has affirmed the Baycol MDL judge’s authority to enjoin the plaintiffs, after losing a class certification motion in the MDL, from running to a (presumably) friendly state-court judge to get the same class certified. Here’s a link to the opinion.

What happened is that one West Virginia law based consumer fraud (that is, economic losses only) class action was removed to federal court and became part of the (more…)

California Vioxx Class Action Slides Into The Sea
The endless see-saw that is the battle to impose reason on California consumer fraud class actions, just took a “see” (or is that a “saw”) in the direction of the good guys. Last week, in a to-be-published opinion, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the denial of class certification for Vioxx-related consumer and third party payor actions. In re Vioxx Class Cases, (more…)

We aren’t the first to note the latest class action denial in the prescription medical product liability field, In re Panacryl Sutures Products Liability Cases, No. 5:08-MD-1959-BO, slip op. (E.D.N.C. Nov. 13, 2009). 360 (subscription only) beat us to the punch the other day. But just because we aren’t first, doesn’t mean there’s nothing in Panacryl worth blogging about.

We view decisions (more…)

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…)

Although pasthistory demonstrates the increasing futility of class action certification in pharmaceutical/medical device product liability litigation, the other side still plugs away, most likely for reasons we’ve discussed here.

The latest denial of class certification came in Solo v. Bausch & Lomb, Inc., slip op., where the plaintiffs sought recovery of purported economic losses from having to throw away allegedly defective (more…)

Since the Supreme Court handed down Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007), we’ve posted twice – here and here – that we think Williams’ reaffirmation, in the specific context of punitive damages, of defendants’ rights to maintain all available legal defenses sounds the death knell for punitive damages class actions.

And not just in the blogosphere. One of us took this constitutional (more…)

Supposedly, Einstein said that, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If that’s the case, then these marketing-based class actions seeking refunds of the purchase price (or some fraction of it) for prescription drugs are at the Einsteinian extreme. As we’ve mentioned before, class certification in these sorts of cases has been denied again, and again, and again. We could add a lot (more…)