We’ve posted quite a biton the substantive due process aspects of punitive damages. Other than that, we frankly hadn’t thought about substantive due process being applicable to other aspects of product liability litigation.

Well, it’s time to start thinking.

A decision has just come down that accepts the argument that the expansion of state common-law tort liability can be so overreaching and so contrary (more…)

Richard Nagareda, law professorat Vanderbilt, is a really smart guy. Bexis got to know him while Professor Nagareda was one of the Reporters for ALI’s Aggregate Litigation Principles Project and Bexis was a defense-oriented gadfly on the Members’ Consultative Group for that project.

Anyway, they kept in touch, and he’s given us a sneak peek at his latest paper entitled “1938 All Over Again? Pre-Trial as Trial (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…)