The decisive March 4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Wyeth in a landmark pharmaceutical product liability case may also close off a major front in a hard-fought battle by businesses and the Bush administration to insulate national corporations from state tort litigation.
The failure to manage a patient's airway can lead to lack of oxygenation and ventilation, and to resulting brain injury or death. Such failures can easily culminate in large awards. An expert explains.
The Supreme Court's decisive ruling on March 4 against Wyeth in a landmark pharmaceutical product liability case may also close off a major front in a hard-fought battle by businesses and the Bush administration to insulate national corporations from state tort litigation.
In last month's issue, we discussed how Jacob Gunvalson, when denied entry into a clinical trial for a drug that might offer treatment for his terminal disease, sued the drug manufacturer to compel it to seek a "compassionate use" exemption. We conclude with a look at the litigation that ensued.
A special three-judge panel has held tentatively that overcrowding in California prisons presents an unconstitutional risk to inmate health and safety and that the prisoner population must be reduced. The panel has previously found that the prison system's mental health and medical care is so negligent that it is a direct cause of inmate deaths and suicides.
Recently, there have been indications that plaintiffs in California medical malpractice actions may renew a constitutional attack on the provisions of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), the tort reform legislation that has governed medical malpractice litigation in California for nearly 25 years. The focus of these recent attacks is MICRA's $250,000 limit on noneconomic damages.
With trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.
Insiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.
At the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.
This article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.
While the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.
