Interesting data from Jury Verdict Research on the median and average values of wrongful death cases where the decedent is female. The overall average compensatory award for wrongful death of an adult female over the last eight years in the United States is $2,990,032 ($1,102,976 is the median). Age is…
The Mass Torts Blog, another defense lawyer blog brought to you by our friends at Dechert, posts on Labor Day about medical screening in mass tort cases. The allegations are basically that plaintiffs’ product liability lawyers are committing fraud when screening clients. Read the post for yourself and tell me…
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial with an anti products liability lawyer spin. No surprise. But what is surprising is that I agree with it. Considering Enron and other business collapses that left stockholders holding the bag with no actual picture of the company’s financial condition, the Financial Accounting…
The Wall Street Journal has a good article online about the preemption battle that is being waged the FDA’s bureaucrats in the courts and in Congress. The last line of the article says that “Some drug companies are telling plaintiffs’ lawyers that if they settle their cases now, they won’t…
Since the Supreme Court’s disaster in Riegel v. Medtronic, I have been hoping and expecting Congress would step in to fix the Supreme Court’s ruling, because it was clear from the amicus briefs submitted in Riegel, from history, and from common sense, that Congress did not intend to prevent medical…
The New York Times ran an article yesterday aptly titled, “It Must Be Bob. I Hear His Hip Squeaking,” discussing people with hip implants, largely Stryker hip implants, who were told to try new ceramic hip implants. Its manufacturers promoted it and its sister implants as being more durable than…
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Riegel v. Medtronic. The issue is whether the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act forecloses state law personal injury lawsuits for injuries from the design, manufacture, and labeling of a Medtronic medical device that the Food and Drug Administration initially granted a pre-market…
The Insurance Journal reported today on an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study that found that General Motors’ vehicles had both the highest and lowest death rates in the period between 2002 and 2005. Chevrolet Blazers built from 2001 to 2004 had 232 driver deaths per million registered vehicles during…
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Genentech posted a letter on its website warning eye specialists of its new eye drug Lucentis, which may increase the risk of stroke for those on Lucentis. Genentech found that patients taking their marketed dose of Lucentis were much more likely to…
A Philadelphia jury found that Wyeth’s hormone replacement therapy Prempro caused an Arkansas woman’s breast cancer and awarded the victim’s family $1.5 million. The jury found that Wyeth was negligent in failing to provide adequate warnings about the risk of breast cancer associated with the use of Prempro. We expect…