Law Brief®: David Pfeffer and Richard Schoenstein Discuss the Legal Implications of Infrastructure Collapses
The Court of Appeal for Ontario has certified a class action against the manufacturer of a stolen handgun used to carry out the 2018 mass shooting on Danforth Avenue in Toronto, reversing in part the motion judge’s decision...more
An expert witness is not supposed to pick a desired result and then reverse engineer inputs and methods that reach that result. As the Ninth Circuit observed 30 years ago, “[c]oming to a firm conclusion first and then doing...more
Just before Christmas, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered a lump of coal to products liability defendants: Sullivan v. Werner Co., 2023 WL 8859656 (Pa. Dec. 22, 2023), affirming a lower court ruling that barred evidence...more
If you don’t know where a line is, you can’t say whether someone has crossed it. That principle applies in spades to expert witnesses, particularly when their role in the case calls on them to help the jury understand where...more
There are few legal phrases more fun to say than “ipse dixit.” The phrase is most commonly used in motions to exclude experts who base their opinions on nothing more than their own say so...more
A plaintiff who alleges that a product is defective usually has to offer expert testimony in support of that allegation. This should come as no surprise for complex products – if it took a team of scientists and engineers to...more
ase In the wake of March Madness, it is only appropriate to call attention to an opinion laced with pithy basketball puns. In Nachimovsky v. Nike, Inc. et al., 2022 WL 943421 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2022), Plaintiff injured his...more
A series of recent rulings out of the Southern District of Texas in an inferior vena cava (IVC) filter case reflect how well-planned discovery can lead to a successful multipronged summary judgment motion and can effectively...more
Applying basic scientific principles to exclude an expert’s unfounded and unsupported opinions, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has granted summary judgment to the maker of the antipsychotic...more
In Kim v. Toyota Motor Corp., 6 Cal.5th 21 (Cal. 2018), the Supreme Court of California considered whether the trial court properly allowed the defendant to introduce evidence of industry custom and practice in defense of a...more
Meridian Eng’g Co. v. United States, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 7024 (Fed. Cir., Mar. 20, 2018) - Meridian Engineering Company (“Meridian”) was hired by the United States (“Government”) to construct flood control structures on...more
Jury returns defense verdict in 18 minutes! Scott M. Sarason and Jens C. Ruiz of Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell won a defense verdict on behalf of Louisville Ladder, Inc. on April 24, 2018, in a product liability case in the...more
Snell & Wilmer attorneys Dan Rodman and Morgan Petrelli recently represented Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A. in the trial of a 2006 Yamaha Rhino rollover lawsuit in the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada (Case No....more
In the Southern District of West Virginia, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Ethicon, Inc., were sued for defective design and failure to warn for their transvaginal mesh TVT-O, in addition to a loss of consortium claim....more
A crucial issue in the successful defense of a product liability case is the exclusion of other incidents and accidents involving products of the manufacturer. In old school parlance, prior incidents were often referred to...more