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Class Action

Mass Tort Litigation Blog

Law professors discuss mass tort and class action lawsuits.

Post Frequency: 9.9/day

Last Entry: March 29, 2011 at 17:41:19

Fosamax Bellwether Case Dismissed

Posted on November 28, 2009
Last Monday Judge John Keenan of the Southern District of New York dismissed the second of three bellwether cases set for trial on Merck's osteoporosis drug, Fosamax. As David Bario of The American Lawyer reports, "the plaintiff in the second...

Florida Verdict Against Philip Morris

Posted on November 27, 2009
Earlier this week, a Florida jury returned a $300 million verdict in Lucinda Naugle's individual lawsuit against Philip Morris. The jury awarded $56 million in compensatory damages plus $244 million in punitive damages. Here's a WSJ Health Blog post, as...

Plaintiff Verdicts in Prempro Trials

Posted on November 24, 2009
In the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) litigation, plaintiffs won substantial verdicts in two trials in state court in Pennsylvania. In the trial that concluded yesterday, the jury imposed punitive damages of $28 million on top of the $6.3 million in...

So What Should the Law Do About Jury Variability?

Posted on November 18, 2009
In my previous post pointing readers to Tim Lytton's thought provoking post on TortsProfBlog, I neglected to mention our own Byron Stier's work on the same issue. Interested readers might look to his piece, Jackpot Justice available on SSRN. Here...

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On the So-Called "Litigation Lottery" in Torts

Posted on November 17, 2009
Tim Lytton has a very interesting post up on Torts Prof Blog about the tort system and the accusations of a litigation lottery. Here is the link. I am very interested in Lytton's critique. I think he is right that...

Around the Web

Posted on November 17, 2009
Dan Levine, Pair of Plaintiffs Lawyers May Face Different Fates in 9th Circuit Disciplinary Action, The Recorder (discussing disciplinary action in Nicaraguan pesticides case). Francis E. McGovern (Duke), The Second Generation of Dispute System Design: Reoccurring Problems and Potential Solutions,...

Embedded Aggregation in Civil Litigation

Posted on November 16, 2009
Richard Nagareda has just posted "Embedded Aggregation in Civil Litigation" on SSRN. I saw him present this piece at NYU and it is worth reading. I always enjoy Nagareda's work and this is no exception. The Article does a good...

Choice of Law and Class Actions

Posted on November 13, 2009
The Shady Grove case got me thinking about uniformity (or lack thereof) in class action law across the circuits and reminded me that in the MTBE Products Liability Litigation, Judge Scheindlin (SDNY) held that the interpretation of the requirements of...

Issacharoff & Klonoff on the Mass Tort Settlements

Posted on November 12, 2009
Samuel Issacharoff (NYU) & Robert Klonoff (Lewis & Clark) have just posted "The Public Value of Settlement" on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article, part of a symposium honoring the 25th anniversary of Owen Fiss?s Against Settlement, takes issue....

Gilles on Consumer Class Actions

Posted on November 11, 2009
We all know judges are hostile to mass tort class actions, but Myriam Gilles (Cardozo) argues that consumer class actions are also suffering the brunt of judicial hostility in an article with the excellent title "Class Dismissed: Contemporary Judicial Hostility...

Judge Requests Consolidation of Birth Control Suits

Posted on November 10, 2009
From the Tort Prof blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tortsprof/2009/11/judge-requests-mass-tort-status-for-new-jersey-birth-control-suits-.html ADL

Recap of Shady Grove Oral Argument

Posted on November 09, 2009
Scotusblog has a very nice recap of the Shady Grove oral argument, better than the real thing in my opinion. I was lucky to be teaching Erie last week in my civil procedure class and have been thinking a lot...

The Trouble with All-or-Nothing Settlements

Posted on November 04, 2009
My new paper, The Trouble with All-or-Nothing Settlements, is now available on SSRN. I presented it at last week's symposium in Kansas on "Aggregate Justice: Perspectives Ten Years After Amchem and Ortiz." The theme of the conference got me thinking....

Argument in Shady Grove Orthopedic Today

Posted on November 02, 2009
The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Shady Grove Orthopedic v. Allstate today. This case is about the intersection between two perennial favorite topics among civil procedure enthusiasts: class actions and Erie. Will Hanna survive Shady Grove? I'm...

WLF Web Seminar on Off-Label Communication

Posted on October 29, 2009
On October 14, 2009, the Washington Legal Foundation hosted a web seminar, Communicating on Off-Label Treatments: Navigating the Treacherous Path Paved by Civil and Criminal Law Enforcement, with speakers Robert Salerno and Adam Hoffinger of Morrison & Foerster...

Vioxx Verdicts

Posted on October 29, 2009
I am collecting all the Vioxx verdicts - here is what I have so far. I welcome reader corrections and information about the current status of all of these cases - have they been appealed to higher courts? settled and...

Confidential Verdicts

Posted on October 28, 2009
I was thinking about Erichson's post on the Prempro punitive damages verdict that has been temporarily sealedl so as not to bias the jury in subsequent trials. This is a very curious aspect of the law to me - why...

South Carolina Settles Zyprexa Off-Label Marketing Case for $45 Million

Posted on October 27, 2009
Hat tip to the TortProf blog on this one. You can see their post here. ADL

Sealed Verdict in Prempro Punitives Trial

Posted on October 27, 2009
Yesterday, a Philadelphia jury found for the plaintiff in the punitive damages phase of a trial involving Prempro, the hormone replacement therapy. How much Wyeth (now a unit of Pfizer) must pay Connie Barton, however, remains secret. Judge Sandra Moss,...

Air Disaster Case Dismissed on Forum Non Grounds

Posted on September 25, 2009
BNA Class Action Reporter notes that a class action brought against Airbus on behalf of the 77 persons that perished when a plane went down near Brazil in July 1007 was dismissed on Forum Non Conveniens grounds. The case will...

Latest Pleadings Scholarship

Posted on September 25, 2009
Two more voices have been added to the discussion of pleadings and the significance of the Twombly/Iqbal line of precedent. They are Robert Bone (Boston U/U Texas) and Ed Hartnett (Seton Hall), two prominent civil procedure scholars that are very...

New Casebook by Stephen Yeazell

Posted on September 22, 2009
Stephen Yeazell (UCLA) has a new casebook out called "Contemporary Civil Litigation" (Aspen 2009) that integrates civil litigation and ethics issues. While I ordinarily wouldn't blog about a casebook, Yeazell's Civil Procedure coursebook and especially the teacher's manual is really...

Yaz Litigation

Posted on September 18, 2009
The FDA recently sent a warning letter to Bayer, which manufacturers Yaz and Yasmin (both types of birth control pills), that it has quality control problems at its German plant. The FDA claims that Bayer's testing method averaged out the...

Kansas Law Review - Aggregate Justice: Perspectives Ten Years After Amchem and Ortiz

Posted on September 17, 2009
Kansas Law Review's symposium this year is titled "Aggregate Justice: Perspectives Ten Years After Amchem." Here's the official blurb and the line-up of speakers: Friday October 30, 2009 Green Hall, 1535 W. 15th Street, Lawrence, Kansas 66045 We are excited...

Procedure/Substance

Posted on September 16, 2009
"I'll let you write the substance . . . and you let me write the procedure, and I'll screw you every time." Rep. John Dingell, Hearings on H.R. 2327 Before the Subcomm. on Admin. Law and Governmental Relations of the...

Regulation and the "Big Case"

Posted on September 16, 2009
Frederick Schauer and Richard Zeckhauser have posted "The Trouble With Cases" on SSRN. This article makes an interesting argument about the dearth of rigorous empirical basis for regulation - by litigation and by legislation as well. CAFA is a wonderful...

The Case Against Products Liability

Posted on September 16, 2009
Law and Economics scholars Steven Shavell and A. Mitchell Polinsky have posted "The Uneasy Case for Products Liability" on SSRN. Here is the abstract: We explain in this Article that the benefits of product liability may well be outweighed by...

Fosamax Mistrial

Posted on September 11, 2009
Judge John Keenan declared a mistrial today in Boles v. Merck, the first bellwether trial in the Fosamax litigation. As we mentioned yesterday and the day before, tensions have run high in the jury room. Here's an excerpt from the...

On Teaching 9/11 in a Torts Class

Posted on September 11, 2009
On this 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I thought I would link my 2006 post on teaching 9/11 in a torts class, as well as Howard Erichson's thoughtful comment on my post. BGS

Fosamax Jury Update

Posted on September 10, 2009
CNN reports this morning that Judge Keenan has "called for a daylong 'cooling off' period" in the Fosamax (an osteoporosis drug) litigation. Apparently jury deliberations became quite tense; the jurors have been deliberating for the last week over Shirley Boles's...

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