Last week we threw up a quickie post about the preemption – or more properly no-preemption decision in Mason v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 2010 WL 605922, slip op. (7th Cir. Feb. 23, 2010). We promised you our thoughts when we’d had a chance to read it thoroughly. We’ve had that chance, but there’s still not a lot to say. That’s because the Mason opinion is almost totally bereft of legal analysis of the preemption issue. It’s (more…)

Last week’s decision in Carr v. Tillery, 2010 WL 92487 (7th Cir. Jan. 12, 2010), was not, strictly speaking, a product liability case. But it involves some key players in that field, and a very key location. And, truth be told, the case appeals to the voyeur within us.

The players are former partners in a plaintiff class action law firm that made a nice business out of hauling corporations (e.g., IBM, Pfizer, Xerox) into Madison (more…)

The New Yorker occasionally runs squibs called “There’ll Always Be an England”– little ditties highlighting charming English eccentricity, often involving gardening for some reason.

We’re thinking of posting entries called “There’ll Always Be Posner,” comments on opinions by Judge Posner, which typically are brilliant and snappily written, typically address jurisdictional issues that nobody (more…)

We had to comment on the most intriguing case of Hughes v. Boston Scientific Corp., 2009 WL 3817586 (S.D. Miss. Nov. 12, 2009). Hughes involved a PMA device, something called a “HydroTherm Ablator,” that allegedly malfunctioned and injured the plaintiff. Thereafter, the defendant (1) changed its adverse event reporting algorithm in response to FDA concerns, and (2) still later, instituted a Class II recall of the device.
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Earlier in the week we got tagged by Amlaw for one of our posts about how boilerplate design and manufacturing defect claims recently got dismissed under Twombly/Iqbal.

That’s cool. Amlaw drives a lot of traffic to little blogs like ours when it says “you’re it.”

But we were a little surprised by the attention given that post. We’ve been writing about applying (more…)