The title pretty much says it all, but it is rare that you have a state supreme court weighing in on whether revocation of a pro hac is an appropriate sanction for plaintiffs’ lawyer shenanigans, so we call it to your attention. Recently, a North Carolina judge revoked the pro hac vice status of two (non-resident) plaintiffs’ lawyers in a case involving powdered Similac. See Sisk v. Transylvania Comm. Hosp., __ S.E.2d __, 2010 WL 2403438 (N.C. (more…)

The Great Recession, or whatever catchy label you want to use, affected everyone in the law business: drug and device companies, defense lawyers, and, it seems, plaintiffs’ lawyers as well. How else to explain two new summary judgment decisions involving devices manufactured by Howmedica, where the plaintiffs’ counsel went cheap, failed to get experts, and thus had their cases tossed?

The first case, Hughes v. Stryker Sales (more…)

Just the other daywe brought you news that the British medical journal Lancet issued a full retractionof an purported scientific article by a plaintiffs’ expert in autism litigation. The author, who was at the time also serving as a plaintiff-side expert, described parts of his research in a manner that “have been proven to be false.”

Something similar seems to be happening in the Accutane litigation. There’s (more…)

Last year, the MDL Panel denied an attempt to centralize all of the federal “shoulder pain pump – chondrolysis” cases. See In re Shoulder Pain Pump – Chondrolysis Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1966 (JPML Aug. 11, 2008) (link here). So the cases have moved ahead individually in federal courts across America.

A couple of weeks ago, a defendant got good news in one of those cases. In Kilpatrick v. Breg,Inc., No. 08-10052-CIV-MOORE/SIMONTON, (more…)

Judge Weinstein granted three more summary judgment motions yesterday in the Zyprexa mass tort. The reasoning is essentially the same for two of them – the statute of limitations ran, and there was no warning causation under the learned intermediary rule. The third case had no statute of limitations issue, and was solely a causation decision. Briefly:

In Morrison v. Eli Lilly, the drug helped the plaintiff with fewer adverse (more…)

As far as pharmaceutical mass torts go, the fen-phen litigation has been around for as long as any. But just because it’s mature litigation doesn’t mean that the old dog can’t do new tricks. Last month a fen-phen case produced the first post-
decision recognizing implied preemption, as we discussed
. This month we’ve got
Crowe v. Wyeth
”), 2009 WL 902351 (E.D. Pa. April 2, 2009), raising the
defense.
The what?
(more…)