Mass Tort Litigation Blog

The Short Guide To Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation

Over at our sister blog, Business Law Prof Blog, Professor Ben Edwards has been making his way through my recent book, Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation.  He does an excellent job of both summarizing and commentating on each chapter. So, if you just don't have the time to do a deep dive into a new book right now but want the quick and dirty takeaway alongside thoughtful, insightful commentary, here are the links to his posts so far:

Chapter 1 - Mass Tort Deal Making - on the nuts and bolts of class actions vs. multidistrict proceedings

Chapter 2 - Mass Tort Deals - on whether quid-pro-quo arrangements exist between lead plaintiffs' attorneys & defense lawyers 

Chapter 3 - Mass Tort Deals - on repeat player dynamics in aggregate litigation (leadership appointments, etc.)

Chapter 4 - Mass Tort Deals - on judges coercing facilitating mass tort settlements 

Chapter 5 - Mass Tort Deals - on the likeness between MDL deals and arbitration

Chapter 6, on reform proposals, will be coming next week.

If you're interested in all of the data and documents in the book, they are all available for free online. That site also has some data visuals that aren't in the book, like this one (clicking the image will bring up an interactive version):

 

MDL Data, Free & Searchable MDL Docs, MDL Rules, and a New Book on Mass Torts

For judges, lawyers, and even academics toiling away in the world of mass torts, getting a handle on the big picture can be tough.  I've seen many empirical claims made when it comes to the push for or against creating federal rules specific to mega-MDLs, all of which are mass torts.  Yet, most lack real, empirical data.

For the past six years, I've been collecting data on all of the products-liability proceedings that were pending on the MDL docket as of May 2013. (Yes, yes, I live a thrilling life.) Like a hoarder, I've squirreled away data on Lone Pine orders, Daubert motions, class-certification motions, plaintiff fact sheets, summary judgment motions, census orders, class action settlements, private aggregate settlements, and on and on and on. Those data-collection efforts have culminated in a book that is out today, Mass Tort Deals.  There is ton of information in the book's appendix on all of the information I just mentioned.  Here's a way to Download Index to Data.

One thing I noticed along the way was that neither Pacer nor Bloomberg Law allow you to search inside the text of MDL dockets, which can be long and unwieldy in and of themselves, as many of you know.  So, with the help of the wonderful UGA Law School IT department, I've created a free website that allows you to search the text of the thousands of MDL documents that I've been stockpiling for the past six years.  It includes all of the documents that I relied on for the book and I will continue to update it periodically.

The Book, Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation:

As for the book, Mass Tort Deals marshals this wide array of empirical data to suggest that the systematic lack of checks and balances in our courts may benefit everyone but the plaintiffs. Multidistrict proceedings, which place a single judge in charge of similar lawsuits filed across the country, consume a substantial portion of the federal courts’ civil caseload.  As the figure below shows, many MDLs are product liability proceedings (for an interactive version, click here):

And if you consider not just the number of proceedings, but the number of actions pending in those proceedings, products-liability suits dominate (for an interactive version, click here): 

Of course, most of these product-liability proceedings are not run-of-the-mill disputes. Litigation over products like pelvic and hernia mesh, opioids, Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder, Roundup, and hip implants are headline-grabbing media magnets.

Federal judges certify a small handful of these proceedings (principally those without personal injuries)  as class actions, which affords them judicial safeguards. But as tort reform has made its way into civil procedure, it has effectively clamped down on class actions.  As you can see from the graphic below, most product-liability proceedings within my dataset ended in private, aggregate settlement (click here for an interactive version):

As readers of my work know, I've voiced some concerns with adequate representation and repeat players in MDLs. Judges and academics have long raised questions about arms-length bargaining and adequate representation in the class-action context, even though Rule 23 builds in some safeguards. In class actions, for example, judges have the authority to appoint class counsel; consider whether counsel adequately represents class members; ensure that any class settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate; and award class counsel’s attorney’s fee.

But worries about collusion, self-interest, and overreaching don’t disappear just because mass litigation can’t be certified as a class action. Instead, we might worry more because the judge lacks any clear-cut authority to police the proceedings in the same way.

 

Those concerns can be exacerbated if repeat players exist leadership positions, which they do. The graph below shows who those players are and you can click here for an interactive version:

 

Some judges appoint more lead lawyers than others, as the graphic below illustrates (click here for an interactive version):

 

 

That repeat players exist isn’t surprising in and of itself. Attorneys specialize all the time. It might be that they use their expertise to generate better outcomes for their clients. But playing the long game may also mean that repeat players develop working relationships with their opponents such that each side can use private settlement to bargain for what matters to them most from a self-interested standpoint.

 

For corporate defendants and their lawyers, this means ending the litigation with the least cost. For lead plaintiffs’ lawyers, this typically means attorneys’ fees—specifically common-benefit fees (the fees they receive for the work they do on behalf of the group as a whole).  As Chapter 3 of Mass Tort Deals details, repeat-player attorneys are prevalent in leadership positions on both the plaintiff and defense side in products-liability multidistrict proceedings.  Here's a look at the major law firms involved in these proceedings on both sides (interactive version):

 

To the extent possible given that most of the mass-tort settlements were private, Chapter 2 examines the deals that these repeat players negotiated with one another. After confirming that one of the top five most connected repeat players participated directly in each settled proceeding’s leadership, I identify the provisions within those settlements that are arguably more beneficial to plaintiffs’ lead lawyers or to the defendants than to the actual plaintiffs.

 

How do these provisions work? To stymie the lawsuits against them, for example, defense corporations include settlement provisions designed to push as many plaintiffs as possible into the settlement program. These "closure" clauses might require plaintiffs’ lawyers to recommend that all their clients accept the settlement offer and, if the client refuses, take steps to withdraw from representing that client.

 

To enter a settlement program, plaintiffs must typically dismiss their lawsuit. But, as I explain in Chapter 5, those plaintiffs often don’t know what, if anything, they will receive under that program. So, plaintiffs may be giving up their lawsuit in exchange for no compensation whatsoever.

 

For example, in litigation over the acid-reflux medicine Propulsid, out of the 6,012 claimants who entered into the settlement program, only 37 received any money. The rest received nothing, but had already dismissed their lawsuit as a condition of entering into the program. Those 37 plaintiffs collectively received little more than $6.5 million.

 

The lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in Propulsid, however, negotiated their common-benefit fees directly with the defendant, Johnson & Johnson, and received $27 million. Much of the remaining funds then reverted back to Johnson & Johnson.

 

Lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in Propulsid announced that they were creating a template for all future deals. Chapter 2 of Mass Tort Deals shows that they did exactly that.

 

Considering settlements that occurred over a 14-year span, Chapter 2 shows that every deal contained at least one closure provision for defendants. Nearly all settlements also contained some provision that increased lead plaintiffs’ lawyers common-benefit fees. Bargaining for attorneys’ fees with one’s opponent is a troubling departure from traditional contingent-fee principles, which are designed to tie lawyers’ fees to their clients’ outcomes.

 

In short, Mass Tort Deals raises the concern that as repeat players influence practices and norms in mass torts, they may undermine plaintiffs’ ability to freely consent to the settlement. That may or may not affect the substantive outcome. Unfortunately, most of the data on how plaintiffs fared under settlement programs was not publicly available.

 

Rules for MDLs?

Given my qualms about what lawyers are doing (Chapter 2 and 3) and what judges are doing (Chapter 4), should we implement rules for MDL proceedings? Not necessarily. Our system needs a makeover, yes.  But Chapter 6 uses basic economic and social principles as the bedrock of reform.

I suggest ways in which we can build opportunities for dissent and competition into the fabric of multidistrict proceedings and incentivize lawyers to use them.

But doing so relies on judges. Educating judges and encouraging them to select leaders via a competitive process, tie leaders’ fees to the benefits they confer on plaintiffs, open the courthouse doors to hear about those benefits (or not) directly from the plaintiffs, and remand those litigants who don’t want to settle can allow the vibrant rivalries within the plaintiffs’ bar to see to it that dissent and competition flourish.

As attorneys object and compete, they are likely to divulge new information, thereby equipping judges with pieces of the puzzle that they currently lack. In short, Chapter 6 explains how arming judges with procedures that better align plaintiffs’ attorneys’ self-interest with their clients’ best interest equips courts to hold parties accountable even without legislation or rulemaking.

From diagnosis to reforms, my goal in Mass Tort Deals isn’t to eliminate these lawsuits; it’s to save them.

Are you a plaintiff involved in a women's health mass tort? Or do you know people who are?

Today's post is really a plea for help with a new project that I've just started.  I've created a new survey that allows plaintiffs to tell me about their interaction with the court system and their attorneys.

I’m hoping to hear directly from plaintiffs who are involved in women’s health mass torts like pelvic mesh, breast implants, NuvaRing, Mirena, and Yasmin/Yaz. 

If you're a plaintiff involved in one of those cases, please consider taking this short survey.  It will ask you questions about whether you had opportunities to tell your side of the story and present evidence, how you felt your lawyer handled your case, how you felt about the process and your outcome, and whether you used third-party funding.

If you're a lawyer or reporter, I'd love your help publicizing the project. Participants' answers will be kept completely confidential, and I am not asking for details that would be covered by a confidentiality provision in a settlement.  

I am not affiliated with the courts or with the lawyers on either side in any way and I do not have any clients of my own.  I don’t consult for any of the lawyers in these cases, and all of my funding comes from the University of Georgia—not from a private company or interest.  In other words, I have no financial ties that affect the way I conduct my research.

Here's more information about me and the research I am doing: https://www.elizabethchambleeburch.com/womens-mdls

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me--if confidentiality is important, please use [email protected] rather than my University of Georgia email.  

Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation

As our readers surely know, despite its bulky name, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) is in the news constantly: litigation over Volkswagen's defeat device, GM’s ignition defect, Toyota’s sudden acceleration, asbestos, and medical drugs and devices (pelvic mesh, Yasmin/Yaz, NuvaRing, Vioxx) are just a few of the higher profile MDLs.

MDL now comprises over 36% of the entire federal civil caseload (that number leaps to 45.6% if you exclude social security and prisoner cases), yet courts and Congress have made it more difficult for these cases to proceed as certified class actions. This litigation doesn’t go away without class certification as many tort reformers believe, it simply persists with far less judicial oversight.

Few rules and little appellate oversight on the one hand, plus multi-million dollar “common-benefit fees” for the lead lawyers who shepherd these cases toward settlement on the other may tempt a cadre of repeat attorneys to fill in the gaps in ways that further their own self interest. (Because there are so many cases involved, judges appoint "lead lawyers" to litigate and negotiate on behalf of the entire group of plaintiffs; if their individual attorney isn’t a lead lawyer, then that attorney has little say in how the litigation is conducted.)

To shed light on some of these issues, my co-author, Margaret Williams, and I have posted a revised version of our paper, Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation: The Social Network (forthcoming, Cornell Law Review) on SSRN.  

We collected data on who the lead attorneys are (plaintiff and defense side) in all product-liability and sales practice cases that were pending on the MDL docket as of May 2013 (those cases covered a 22-year span), built an adjacency matrix, and employed a two-mode (actors and events) projection of a bipartite network (also known as an affiliation network) to graph the ties between lawyers judicially appointed to leadership positions (the actors) in multidistrict proceedings (the events).  (For the non-statistically inclined, this social network analysis is somewhat akin to the kind that Facebook has popularized.)

The point was to reveal what the naked eye cannot see: how those attorneys and MDLs connect to one another. (Detailed, searchable PDFs of the social network with the players and litigations are available here). We also collected data on the publicly available nonclass settlements that repeat players brokered, reviewed news and media accounts of those litigations, and analyzed the common-benefit fees awarded to the lead plaintiffs' lawyers.

Here’s a summary of our key findings:

• Repeat players are prevalent on both the plaintiff and the defense side.

• No matter what measure of centrality we used, a key group of 5 attorneys maintained their elite position within the network.These 5 attorneys may act as gatekeepers or toll takers, for example. This matters considerably, for lead lawyers control the proceeding and negotiate settlements. They can bargain for what may matter to them most: defendants want to end lawsuits, and plaintiffs’ lawyers want to recover for their clients and receive high fee awards along the way.  

• By identifying settlement provisions that one might argue principally benefit the repeat players, we examined the publicly available nonclass settlements these elite lawyers designed. Over a 22-year span, we were unable to find any deal that didn’t feature at least one closure provision for defendants, and likewise found that nearly all settlements contained some provision that increased lead plaintiffs’ lawyers’ common-benefit fees. Bargaining for attorneys’ fees with one’s opponent is a stark departure from traditional contingent-fee principles, which are designed to tie lawyers’ fees to their clients’ outcome.

• Based on the evidence available to us, we found reason to be concerned that when repeat players influence the practices and norms that govern multidistrict proceedings—when they “play for rules,” so to speak—the rules they develop may principally benefit them at the plaintiffs’ expense.

A highly concentrated plaintiff and defense bar is nothing new, nor is the disquiet about where that concentration may lead. As scholars have long recognized, repeat play tends to regress our adversarial system from its confrontational roots toward a state of cooperation.

In the criminal context, prosecutors and public defenders routinely work together through plea bargaining, leading them toward mutual accommodation; incumbents form a primary community of interest, whereas clients present secondary challenges and contingencies. As such, adversary features are often overshadowed by regulars’ quid pro quo needs. As Professor Jerome Skolnick has explained, those working group relationships become a social control problem only once they reach a “tipping point where cooperation may shade off into collusion, thereby subverting the ethical basis of the system.” (Social Control in the Adversary System, 11 J. Conflict Resol. 52, 53 (1969)).

As I’ve argued in a separate article, Monopolies in Multidistrict Litigation, we've reached that tipping point in MDL, and these circumstances warrant regulation. Even though MDL judges are the ones who entrench and enable repeat players, they also are integral to the solution.

By tinkering with lead-lawyer selection and compensation methods and instilling automatic remands to a plaintiff’s original court after leaders negotiate master settlements, judges can capitalize on competitive forces already in play. Put simply, the antidote is to reinvigorate competition among plaintiffs’ attorneys and I’ve set forth several specific proposals for doing so in Part III of Monopolies in Multidistrict Litigation.  

For interested judges, that article's appendix also contains a Pocket Guide for Leadership Appointment and Compensation, a Sample Leadership Application form, and sample orders for suggesting remand and replacing leaders who ignore adequate representation concerns.

Wall Street Journal Editorial on Innovator Liability in Alabama

The Wall Street Journal editorial, Innovator Liability, Take Two, discusses the Alabama Supreme Court's reconsideration this week of innovator liability.

BGS

Alabama Supreme Court to Reconsider Innovator Liability

Legalnewsline reports in Ala. SC to hear oral arguments in case over ‘innovator liability’ next week, by Jessica Karmasek.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform has more discussion of the issues.

BGS

Kate Greenwood on Litigant Regulation of Physician Conflicts of Interest

Professor Kate Greenwood (Seton Hall) has posted to SSRN her article, 'Litigant Regulation' of Physician Conflicts of Interest, Ga. St. L. Rev. (forthcoming).  Here's the abstract:

While physicians’ financial relationships with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers are increasingly of concern to legislators and regulators, plaintiffs have had only limited success pursuing private law remedies for the harms that result from conflicts of interest. Courts have long channeled individual patients’ claims against their conflicted doctors into the medical malpractice cause of action, where patients have difficulty establishing that their physicians’ conflicts caused them to suffer concrete and compensable injuries. With recent notable exceptions, courts have also blocked patients’ claims against drug and device manufacturers. Courts apply the learned intermediary doctrine to dispose of failure-to-warn personal injury suits, without regard to whether the plaintiff’s physician had a financial relationship with the defendant manufacturer. Third-party payers, such as employers, insurance companies, and union health and welfare funds, have similarly struggled to overcome a strong presumption of physician independence. Courts routinely find that a physician’s prescribing decision breaks the chain of causation between a manufacturer’s illegal promotional efforts and a payer’s obligation to pay for a prescription, even when those promotional efforts include the payment of kickbacks.  

Courts can and should move beyond the often counterfactual presumption of physician independence. In personal injury cases, this can be achieved through a nuanced analysis of alleged conflicts of interest that distinguishes between kickbacks, on the one hand, and legitimate financial relationships between manufacturers and physicians, on the other. Limited early discovery would allow plaintiffs to develop their claims about the influence of conflicts on their physicians’ decision-making without putting an undue burden on defendants. In economic injury cases, courts can move beyond the presumption of physician independence by allowing plaintiffs to use standard statistical methods to demonstrate that physicians’ prescribing decisions were not independent in the aggregate. If the doctrine were to evolve in these ways, it would amplify the role “litigant regulation” plays in the regulatory structure governing physician-industry relationships and bring closer the goal of ensuring that patients and payers are fairly compensated for the harms caused by conflicts of interest.

BGS

SCOTUS Oral Argument in Mutual Pharm. Co. v. Bartlett: Generic Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Potential Immunity from Suit

Wall Street Journal article by Jess Bravin on Tuesday's argument, and more from SCOTUSblog.

BGS

ABA Litigation Section Conference on Current Issues on Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Litigation

The conference will take place on November 16, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts.  Here's the brochure.

BGS

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Class Action Certified in Southern District of California

The PR news wire has more on the case being brought against Wyeth by plaintiffs' firms Beasley Allen, Gregory Holt & Associates, P.A., and Rushall McGeever.

BGS

Stacey Lee on Federal Preemption of Generic-Drug Failure-to-Warn Claims

Professor Stacey Lee (Johns Hopkins, Carey School of Business) has posted to SSRN her article, Pliva v. Mensing: Generic Consumers' Unfortunate Hand, Yale J. Health Pol'y L. & Ethics (forthcoming 2012).  Here's the abstract:

The United States Supreme Court held in PLIVA v. Mensing that federal preemption immunizes generic drug manufacturers from liability for state law failure-to-warn claims. As a result, consumers harmed by a mislabeled generic drug will be unable to bring actions against generic manufacturers under state law. The Court confessed that the resulting federal drug-labeling scheme dealt consumers an “unfortunate hand.” By removing generic manufacturers’ duty to improve the adequacy of their products’ warning labels, the Supreme Court calls into question the safety of generic drugs.

BGS 

The Economist on Global Fake and Substandard Pharmaceuticals

The Economist discusses the growing global problem of fake and substandard pharmaceuticals in Fake pharmaceuticals: Bad medicine -- The world's drug supply is global.  Governments have failed to keep up.  Absent from The Economist's discussion of government regulators and industry self-policing is the role of private litigation.  Couldn't emerging global tort litigation also deter wrongdoers and be part of the solution?

BGS

Compounding Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and the Fungal Meningitis Outbreak

A Wall Street Journal article, Pharmacy in Outbreak Acted Like Drug Maker, by Mark Maremont, Jonathan D. Rockoff, and Timony W. Martin explores the history of the companies allegedly involved in the fungal meningitis outbreak.  The article notes that a class action has already been filed in federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota.

BGS

Federal Government to Require Pharmaceutical Company Reporting of Payments to Doctors

The New York Times reports that under new regulations to be announced by the Obama administration, pharmaceutical companies will have to report payments to non-employee doctors for "research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment."  The reporting requirements are to cover any company that has a product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and the reporting information is to be subsequently posted by the government on a publicly accessible website.

BGS 

Yaz Litigation Likely to Heat Up After FDA Relabeling

Last week the FDA voted 21-5 to revise the labeling on Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz, Safyral, and its generic versions to clarify the potential risk of blood clots in the legs and lungs from taking the pills.  After debating the conflicting data for more than nine hours, the panelists disagreed on the evidence's quality but agreed that the risks should be clearly stated in the label.  Here's an excerpt from the Huffington Post's report:

"Clearly the wording is inadequate and incomplete," said Dr. Richard Bockman of New York's Hospital for Special Surgery. "Adverse events have to be made graphic so physicians and patients are aware of the consequences."

In an earlier vote, panelists voted 15-11 that the pills remain a beneficial option for preventing pregnancy. The majority ruling amounts to a vote of confidence for keeping the drugs on the market, though well over a third of panelists voted against the drug's overall benefit, citing numerous alternatives available.

"I can see no real group of patients that this drug benefited over existing alternatives," said Mark Woods of New York University School of Medicine. "Without any clear benefit, and given the potentially catastrophic risk, I voted no."

Two large studies conducted by German drugmaker Bayer have shown no difference in blood clots between patients taking the company's drugs and patients taking older medications.

But since 2009, five large studies have suggested drospirenone-containing pills carry a slightly higher risk of blood clots than older birth control pills, though events in both groups are very rare. Even a slightly higher risk can be critical because blood clots can trigger heart attacks, strokes and blockages in lungs or blood vessels.

Here's a link to a TIME magazine report and to a recent NY Times piece.

ECB

 

Levaquin Bellwether Trials Update

BNA reports that a set of cases (one trial, two plaintiffs) reached a defense verdict in the Levaquin pharma litigation.  Beare v. Johnson & Johnson, N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div., No. ATL-L-196-10, verdict 10/14/11; Gaffney v. Johnson & Johnson, N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div., No. ATL-L-4551-09, verdict 10/14/11).  The cases are consolidated before Judge Carol Higbee of New Jersey, who also oversaw the New Jersey Vioxx litigation.

The allegations are the the manufacturer of the antibiotic did not provide adequate warnings of its potential to cause tendon injuries. There are six more bellwether cases to go. According to BNA there are approximately 1,900 Levaquin cases before Judge Higbee.

I don't have information about how the bellwether cases were picked or why eight is the number.  For an analysis of how judges can do a more rigorous job of using bellwether trials to promote case resolution and equality among litigants, see my latest paper: The Case for "Trial by Formula." 

ADL

Supreme Court decides Smith v. Bayer

Today, the Supreme Court decided Smith v. Bayer (opinion here), applying the Anti-Injunction Act to reject a federal court's attempt to control state court class certification.

The federal MDL judge in the Baycol litigation had rejected class certification for a class of West Virginia plaintiffs, finding that common questions did not predominate because each plaintiff would have to prove actual injury.  One of the members of the putative class filed a lawsuit in West Virginia state court (it was non-removable because it included several West Virginia defendants in addition to Bayer), and sought class certification.  Bayer asked the MDL judge for an order enjoining the state court from hearing Smith's motion to certify the class, arguing that Smith's class action was identical to the one the federal court had rejected.  The judge granted the injunction and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.

The Supreme Court unanimously reversed in an opinion by Justice Kagan.  The Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. 2283, generally prohibits federal courts from enjoining state court proceedings.  Bayer argued that this case fits within the Act's relitigation exception; according to Bayer, issue preclusion prevents Smith from relitigating the issue of class certification.  The Court rejected this argument for two reasons: (1) it's not the same issue, and (2) it's not the same party. 

It's not the same issue because states are entitled to interpret their own procedural rules differently from federal courts' interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  Last year's ruling in Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates v. Allstate (2010) emphasized that Rule 23 applies in federal courts and state courts apply their own class action rules.  The text of West Virginia's Rule 23 is nearly identical to the federal rule, but as Justice Kagan explained, federal and state courts "can and do apply identically worded procedural provisions in widely varying ways."  In the Rezulin litigation, the West Virginia Supreme Court announced that it did not necessarily follow the federal approach to class certification, particularly on the question of predominance.  Given that the state does not follow the federal interpretation of Rule 23, issue preclusion cannot prevent relitigation of class certification and the injunction was improper.

It's not the same party because Smith was not a named plaintiff in the federal court case.  You can't bind a non-party, as the Supreme Court emphasized in Taylor v. Sturgell (2008), where it rejected nonparty preclusion on a theory of virtual representation.  Bayer argued that Smith was bound as a member of the class, but the Supreme Court pointed out that there was no class because class certification was rejected: "The definition of the term 'party' can on no account be stretched so far as to cover a person like Smith, whom the plaintiff in a lawsuit was denied leave to represent."

The Court got it right.  It's a complicated case but it was an easy decision.  State courts have their own rules and are entitled to decide what procedures to follow.  Even though a federal judge concluded (correctly, in my view) that the mass tort litigation involving Baycol was not suitable for a class action under Federal Rule 23, the West Virginia state court is entitled to decide that issue under the West Virginia class action rule.  But the decision shows how messy things get when mass disputes are litigated in both federal and state courts.  Justice Kagan's opinion acknowledges the "special problems of relitigation" that can be presented by class actions, but suggests that the solution lies in removal under CAFA and transfer under the MDL statute, rather than departing from fundamental principles of preclusion.

HME

New York Jurors Find Merck Not Liable in Fosamax Bellwether Trial

Merck has won the second of three bellwether trials on Fosamax, Graves v. Merck & Co., 1:06-cv-05513 (S.D.N.Y.).  Judith Graves, a Florida resident, sued the company and alleged that Fosamax (an osteoporosis drug) caused her jawbone to deteriorate.  The jury asked the judge for the date of the first report from which Merck could have known of an association between Fosamax and jawbone problems and found that the report appeared six months after the plaintiff's problems started.  Accordingly, jurors might've decided that Merck couldn't have known about the risks in time to warn the plaintiff.

Merck faces more than 1,500 claims in federal and state courts alleging various defects in Fosamax.  So far it has won two of the three cases that have gone to a jury trial; the third awarded damages of $8 million to the plaintiff, which was reduced to $1.5 million.

The New York Times article on the trial is available here, and the Wall Street Journal article is available here.  TheStreet provides the most detailed coverage, which is available here.

ECB

Supreme Court to Consider Vaccine Case

Barry Meier of the NYTimes reports.  The issue is whether the plaintiff can bring products liability suits or whether they must bring the suit only in the vaccine court, created by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. 

This case concerns a woman who suffered seizures as a result of a DPT vaccine administered when she was a baby and has resultant developmental problems.  But there are many parents of children with autism who believe there is a link between vaccines and autism and would like to bring their cases outside of the adminsitrative system set up by the Act.

Thomas Burke, a political scientist at Wellesley College, has written on this topic.  Click here for his website.

ADL

Verdict Reduced and Lawyer Sanctioned in Fosomax Bellwether Trial

Southern District of NY Judge John F. Keenan reduced the verdict from 8 million to 1.5 million dollars. He also sanctioned the lawyer 2,500 dollars for referencing another Fosomax trial when explicitly told not to do so by the judge.

See the New York Law Journal and Torts Prof Blog for coverage.

I think we need to open up (or reopen) the question of what juries in bellwether cases ought to know about other cases, the range of verdicts that this "type" of case usually gets, and other information that will help them reach decisions.  For more on why this might be a good idea see my newest piece, Rough Justice.

ADL