Today’s takeaway: never be so bold as to assume what an Article III judge will do. To the surprise of this author, and Judge Gregg Costa of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Kinkeade of the Northern District of Texas, who presides over the Pinnacle Device MDL, is proceeding to trial with a set of consolidated actions, originating out of New York.
Judge Kinkeade’s decision to try these cases comes on the heels of a Fifth Circuit decision deriding his conclusion, that the Pinnacle Device defendants waived their so-called Lexecon objections, as “patently erroneous” and a clear abuse of discretion. Nevertheless, because the Fifth Circuit denied the defendants’ petition for a writ of mandamus—which would have prohibited the trials from proceeding as scheduled—Judge Kinkeade merely continued the trial until after the Fifth
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The Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System, a hip-implant device, is the subject of a massive Multidistrict Litigation (MDL), consolidating over 9,300 plaintiffs’ product-liability actions in the Northern District of Texas. See In re DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., 2017 WL 3768923 (5th Cir. 2017). Under the MDL statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1407, actions transferredRead the full article →
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Illinois granted certification to a class of consumers on the issue of liability for allegations arising out of claims that Precor, Inc. sold treadmills featuring heart rate monitoring technology that Plaintiffs claim did not provide accurate heart rate readings. Mednick v. Precor Inc.,Read the full article →
If you’re reading this headline at your desk, I’m sorry to share some bad news: a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that adults who are inactive for longs periods of time during the day are at risk for early death–even if they exercise regularly. As one researcher putRead the full article →
As lawyers, whether in the context of a motion submitted to the court or a letter sent to opposing counsel, we place a premium on persuasive writing. Our writing is most persuasive when we are able to cite to legal opinions or other authorities to support well-crafted arguments. Earlier generationsRead the full article →
