Mass Tort Defense : Mass Tort Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Sean P. Wajert : Dechert Law Firm : Products Liability, Class Actions, Pharmaceutical Litigation

The court managing the Gulf oil spill MDL recently entered an important case management order defining the structure and scope of the upcoming trial on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  That Trial of Liability, Limitation, Exoneration, and Fault Allocation is scheduled to commence, as previously ordered in CMO No. 1 and CMO No. 2, on February 27, 2012.  See In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, MDL No. 2179 (E.D. La., Order 9/14/11).

Readers know we have been keeping an eye on this signficant litigation since the MDL was created. CMO No. 3 notes that the trial will address all allocation of fault issues that are to be tried to the bench without a jury, including the negligence, gross negligence, or other bases of liability of, and the proportion of liability allocatable to, the various defendants, third parties, and non-parties with respect to the issues, including limitation of liability.

The trial will be conducted in three phases.

Phase One [the Incident Phase] of the trial will address issues arising out of the conduct of various parties, third parties, and non-parties allegedly relevant to the loss of well control at the Macondo Well, the ensuing fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon vessel, the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon on April 22, 2010, and the initiation of the release of oil from the Macondo Well or Deepwater Horizon.

Phase Two of the trial will address Source Control and Quantification of Discharge issues. Source Control issues consist of issues pertaining to the conduct of various parties, third parties, and non-parties regarding stopping the release of hydrocarbons stemming from the Incident from April 22, 2010 through approximately September 19, 2010. Quantification of Discharge issues refer to  issues pertaining to the amount of oil actually released into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Incident from the time when these releases began until the Macondo Well was capped on approximately July 15, 2010 and then permanently cemented shut on approximately September 19, 2010.

Phase Three [Containment Phase] of the trial will address issues pertaining to the efforts by various parties, third parties, and non-parties aimed at containing oil discharged as a result of the Incident by, for example, controlled burning, application of dispersants, use of booms, skimming, etc. Phase Three of the trial will also address issues pertaining to the migration paths and end locations of oil released as a result of the Incident as carried by wind, currents, and other natural forces.

CMO No. 3 also addresses the sequence of proof for Phase One: first plaintiffs, then Transocean, then the other defendants. At the end of each Phase of the trial and after consideration of the parties' submissions, the Court may decide to issue partial Findings of Fact and  conclusions of Law for that Phase if it deems the record adequately developed. The Court said it anticipates that discovery and other pretrial proceedings for Phase Two of the trial and possibly for Phase Three of the trial will likely need to be conducted concurrently with pretrial proceedings for and the conduct of Phase One of the trial.

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The court overseeing the coordinated litigation in New Jersey state court over the birth control pills Yaz, Yasmin, and Ocella recently issued a case management order.  See CMO No. 25 - Bellwether Trial Selection Plan.

Here at MassTortDefense we are always interested in the nuts and bolts of how mass tort litigation is managed, and have posted about bellwether trials before. The NJ court order calls for creation of a pool of 18 cases from which the first trials will come. Nine will be selected by plaintiffs and nine by defendant. Of the nine on each side, 3 must allege each of the three main alleged injuries in this litigation.

Case specific discovery for the cases in the pool will begin in August, 2011, and must be completed in November, 2011. The order establishes a schedule for expert discovery and challenges to experts.

The bellwether trials will be selected from the group of 18.  If the parties cannot agree on a sequence, the Court will decide. The first trial is set for September, 2012.

There are about 1,000 cases pending in the New Jersey proceedings. The Court stated it had not yet decided whether there will be individual trials or consolidations. See In re Yaz, Yasmin, and Ocella Litigation, N.J. Super. Ct., No. 287 (7/8/11). 
 

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We have posted about the welding fumes MDL before. Call it case management by option-- as the court has worked through the bellwether trials, it is interesting that the MDL court gave the next-up plaintiff (in the Street trial) a choice.  Plaintiff could either (1) maintain his existing trial date of June 1, 2011, at which trial he may not offer the opinions of his expert Dr. Sanchez-Ramos; or (2) postpone the starting date for trial of his case until on or about November 1, 2011, and the Court would conduct a Daubert hearing on the admissibility of Dr. Sanchez-Ramos’s opinions during the summer of 2011.

Plaintiff Street chose the second option. Accordingly, the MDL Court has set the Daubert hearing to begin on August 24, 2011, with the expectation the hearing will last two days. The parties were directed to negotiate a schedule for briefing, expert depositions, and so on, and provide it to the Special Master as soon as possible. The schedule will include a deadline of April 5, 2011, for provision by Dr. Sanchez-Ramos of a supplemental expert report and literature review list.

Trial of the Street case was accordingly postponed to November 1, 2011. The Court said it will
discuss trial preparation deadlines with the parties during the next case management teleconference.  In re Welding Fume Products Liability Litigation,  No. 1:03-CV-17000 (N.D. Ohio, 3/25/11).  

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With the recognition by many courts of the inappropriateness of the use of the class action device for personal injury claims, the use of other methods to manage mass torts has emerged.  One approach frequently seen within MDLs is the bellwether trial.  Only a proportion of the cases are selected for case specific discovery; only a fraction of them go into a trial pool; and only a percentage of them are selected for trial, to serve as bellwethers for the remaining cases. The hope is that the trial-selected cases provide sufficient information, about claims and defenses, and case values, to inform and propel the disposition of the remaining cases. Such trials may force plaintiffs' counsel to prepare their standard trial package, and the trials may give some sense of how sound that package is. The bellwether trials may give the court a context to resolve legal questions that arise at a trial as witnesses begin to take the stand. Bellwether trials may test the expert witnesses and theories, and give both parties a sense of how much it costs to try a case to verdict. In theory, test trials are to produce valuable information that will allow the parties to assess the strength and settlement value of all the related cases. Accordingly, which cases go first, from among the hundreds or thousands in the mass tort can be extremely significant.

The process for selection of the bellwether cases is crucial.  If plaintiffs are permitted to handpick their best cases to go first, the process works only if plaintiffs lose their best cases; if they win their best cases, that comes as no surprise to anyone.  Ideally the court would pick truly representative cases. 

A significant, although less well recognized issue, is what happens when a bellwether plaintiff cannot or will not go to trial.  Plaintiffs often adopt this tactic to replace a plaintiff whose claim turns out to be, after discovery, not as strong as originally expected.  In the FEMA trailer formaldehyde MDL, the Fifth Circuit recently confirmed that plaintiffs cannot play fast and loose with the procedure, dropping plaintiffs from the line for trial without some sanction. The court of appeals refused to resuscitate a bellwether claim that was dismissed with prejudice after the plaintiff said he could not go forward with trial. In re: FEMA Trailer Formaldehyde Products Liability Litig., No. 09-31131 (5th Cir. 12/14/10).

Raymond Bell and his mother, like thousands of other plaintiffs, filed suit against multiple defendants who participated in the government’s program to supply temporary housing for victims of the devastating 2005 hurricanes. These cases were assigned by the Multi-District Litigation Panel for pretrial management by Judge Engelhardt in New Orleans. The MDL court set dates in 2009 and 2010 for four bellwether cases, each to be prosecuted by a plaintiff against one of the four trailer manufacturers estimated to have the most units at issue in the suits. The case of Diana Bell, Raymond’s mother, was identified as the bellwether case against Keystone RV, manufacturer of the trailer in which her family had lived.  Diana then dropped out, and voluntarily dismissed her case with prejudice. After consulting with counsel, the court promptly selected Raymond Bell as the next bellwether plaintiff in order to maintain the benefit of trial preparation concerning the particular trailer they both had lived in. The next Bell, however, also moved to substitute a new bellwether plaintiff or obtain a continuance of the 2010 trial date.

He made three arguments in support of this dual motion. He asserted he could not take two weeks off from his job to attend trial;  he could not afford to forego at least one week of income; and the trial dates would interfere with his participation in Community College classes at the beginning of the spring semester.

The trial court concluded that Raymond Bell really did not want to go to trial. He moved for a dismissal without prejudice and attached an affidavit asserting as fact the arguments noted above. He expressed doubt about the curative impact of the judge’s proposed instruction if he were to be absent from part of the trial.  The MDL court noted that plaintiffs’ counsel should take notice that all plaintiffs who assert claims in an MDL have to be ready and willing to serve as bellwether plaintiffs, if called upon to do so. The claims of those plaintiffs who refuse to do so, when called upon, will be dismissed with prejudice.

The reasoning was that the parties had expended much time, effort, and money into readying the case involving the Bell trailer for trial. Based on the decisions of the plaintiffs, all the pre-trial work and discovery relating to the Bell trailer was rendered utterly useless. All of the resources spent in preparing this case for trial had been wasted. Because the parties had to choose another bellwether plaintiff, which will involve conducting discovery on an entirely different trailer and readying a completely different case for trial, the claims of Mr. Bell, like those of Mrs. Bell, should be dismissed with prejudice.   Not doing so would possibly cause other bellwether plaintiffs to “jump ship” at the last minute; this is obviously a tactic that any MDL court does not wish to encourage.

On appeal the Fifth Circuit found that it was not hard to justify the court’s decision to deny the plaintiff's alternative motions. Raymond Bell’s attempt to withdraw as plaintiff or to continue seemed contrived, especially in light of his mother’s less than diligent prosecution of a claim bearing on the same trailer. Nothing in his motion papers distinguished Bell’s inconvenience in going forward with trial from the inconvenience that any plaintiff may suffer from having to try the case he has filed. The case had been pending for months, the parties had been actively preparing for trial.

Plain legal prejudice would have accrued to defendants from an unconditional dismissal of Raymond Bell’s case without prejudice. The court would have to realign Keystone RV with a new bellwether plaintiff who resided in a different trailer and whose suit would almost surely add a different group of subsidiary defendants. Not only would Bell be able to refile his suit, but the appellees were in no way spared the continuing costs of legal defense. Defendants'  investment in trial preparation for Bell’s case was wasted. Moreover, other plaintiffs in the FEMA trailer formaldehyde litigation were disadvantaged by the tactics employed on Bell’s behalf as they were delayed in acquiring trial information important for their cases. The size and scope of this multiparty litigation inescapably heightened the prejudice from Bell’s motion to dismiss.

Bottom line is that Bell wanted to have his cake and eat it too by withdrawing from a bellwether
trial and then sitting back to await the outcome of another plaintiff’s experience against the appellees. When a plaintiff files any court case, however, sitting back is no option. He must be prepared to undergo the costs, psychological, economic and otherwise, that litigation entails. That the plaintiff becomes one of a mass of thousands pursuing particular defendants lends urgency to this reality. Courts must be exceedingly wary of mass litigation in which plaintiffs are unwilling to move their cases to trial. Any individual case may be selected as a bellwether, and no plaintiff has the right to avoid the obligation to proceed with his own suit, if so selected.

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The Judge overseeing the Welding Fume Products Liability MDL Litigation has issued a “Trial Template” to assist transferor courts in handling the 3,900 remaining cases in the future.  In re: Welding Fume Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1535 (N.D. Ohio).

The document outlines the proceedings that have occurred in this MDL since its 2003 inception,
and summarizes the court’s pretrial rulings applicable to every MDL case. (All of this MDL court's written Orders cited in the document are available through the MDL court’s site.)  The stated purpose of the document is to assist trial judges in transferor courts who may preside over the trial of an individual welding fume case, after the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation remands the
case from the MDL court back to the transferor court.

(Another good source on this mass tort for the interested reader is Jowers v. Lincoln Elec. Co., 608 F.Supp.2d 724 (S.D. Miss. 2009), in which the court reviewed all of the parties’ evidence in the context of resolving defendants’ post-judgment motions, filed after the jury reached a rare plaintiff’s verdict in the fourth MDL bellwether trial.)

Key points: since the MDL was created in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in June 2003, more than 9,800 cases have been transferred from other courts, and 2,700 have been removed to or directly filed with the court. Voluntary dismissals, remands and other events have reduced the number of pending cases to approximately 3,900. The gravamen of the complaint in each of these cases is that manganese contained in the fumes given off by welding rods has caused the plaintiff to suffer neurological injury, and the defendant manufacturers of these welding rods failed to warn of this hazard. At trial, defendants typically interpose some or all of the following fact-based defenses: (1) the warning language defendants used was adequate; (2) the plaintiff did not prove he used a particular defendant’s welding rods; (3) the plaintiff did not prove he saw a particular defendant’s warnings; (4) the plaintiff did not prove his neurological condition was caused by exposure to welding fumes; (5) the plaintiff’s neurological condition is not manganese-induced "Parkinsonism," it is something else (e.g., psychogenic movement disorder); (6) the defendants are immune pursuant to their role as government contractors; (7) the defendants are not liable because the plaintiff’s employer was a learned intermediary; (8) the defendants are not liable because the plaintiff was a sophisticated user; (9) the plaintiff did not prove that a better warning would have made any difference; (10) the plaintiff is, to some degree, responsible for his own injuries under the theories of contributory negligence, comparative negligence, or assumption of the risk; and (11) punitive damages are not available because the plaintiff did not present clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence.

The MDL court presided over six bellwether trials and is now in the process of suggesting remand to transferor courts of cases that have become close to trial-ready, the judge said. The court has so far applied the laws of five states in MDL bellwether trials: Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, California, and Iowa. The parties sometimes, but not always, have agreed on which state’s law applies. In cases of disagreement, the choice-of-law analysis a transferor court will have to apply is likely to be fact-specific.

The court has granted summary judgment to certain defendants (MetLife & Caterpillar) in all welding fume cases. Further, the Court entered a “Peripheral Defendant Dismissal Order,” dismissing without prejudice all defendants in every case except those against whom a given plaintiff is most likely to proceed at trial. Still remaining as defendants in virtually every case are five of the biggest welding rod manufacturers: (1) Lincoln Electric Company, (2) BOC Group (formerly known as Airco) (3) ESAB Group, (4) TDY Industries (formerly known as Teledyne Industries and Teledyne McKay), and (5) Hobart Brothers Company. Defendant-specific discovery in each case may lead to dismissal of some of these five defendants, and possibly to renaming of some previously-dismissed defendants, the court observed. 

Regarding discovery, the parties have engaged in huge amounts of generic discovery directed at
information potentially relevant to every case. This includes, for example, the defendants’ alleged historical knowledge of the hazards posed by welding fumes, the warnings defendants provided to welders over time, and the state of medical and scientific knowledge regarding neurotoxicity of manganese in welding fumes. For the most part, the parties have completed all general discovery. To prepare for trial in a specific welding fume case, the parties must engage in substantial case-specific discovery directed at information relevant to the individual plaintiff’s particular claims and circumstances. This discovery typically will address the plaintiff’s employment history, medical history, and welding experiences. The court observed that at least some of this plaintiff-specific discovery may not occur until after the MDL court has remanded the case to the transferor court. Accordingly, a transferor court may need to oversee some aspects of case-specific discovery.

As to plaintiffs, about ten years ago, the national plaintiffs’ bar engaged in a concerted effort to notify welders that, if they suffered from a movement disorder, their neurological injury might be caused by exposure to welding fumes. The MDL court then imposed several obligations on plaintiffs’ counsel to ensure they intend to actually try the cases they filed. These additional obligations include the filing of: (1) a “Notice of Diagnosis” of neurological injury, signed by a medical doctor; and (2) a “Certification of Intent to Try the Case,” to be submitted by plaintiff’s counsel following initial medical records discovery. These obligations have winnowed the plaintiffs’ cases substantially, so the MDL court believes that there is some likelihood that a case remanded to a transferor court will go to trial.

On the expert front, the parties sought to introduce at trial testimony from a plethora of experts in a number of fields, including neurology, neuro-pathology, neuro-psychology, neuro-radiology, epidemiology, bio-statistics, industrial hygiene, industrial engineering, chemistry, materials science, toxicology, warnings, corporate ethics, military specification and procurement, economics, government lobbying, and ancient corporate documents. Early in this MDL, the court held a multi-day Daubert hearing to determine the admissibility of opinions offered by these experts. Further, the court engaged in additional analyses of the admissibility of expert testimony prior to each MDL
bellwether trial.

Before each MDL bellwether trial, the parties filed numerous motions in limine addressing the admissibility of various pieces of evidence, ranging from critical documents to relatively short comments made by witnesses. The court reviews each of those rulings in this latest document.  Similarly, the court had ruled on a number of motions for summary judgment as a matter of state and federal law. These motions are also described in the document.  For example, to prevail on his product liability claims against a particular manufacturing defendant, a welding fume plaintiff must show he actually used that manufacturer’s products. Because many plaintiffs worked as welders for a variety of employers in different locations over many years, and because welding rods are somewhat fungible, the discovery of product identification evidence can be difficult, and the results less than clear, said the court. Whether a given defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law based on lack of product identification is a highly fact-specific question, and the answer as to certain defendants in certain cases may not become clear even until after trial.

Finally, the court provides a number of useful appendices and charts, including MDL Bellwether Trial Result Summary and MDL Bellwether Trial Witness Chart.

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Readers concerned about punitive damages law have their eyes on Wyeth LLC v. Scroggin.  The case involves a woman who allegedly developed cancer after taking hormone therapy drugs. (The FDA continues to approve the drugs as safe and effective.) The plaintiff contends that Wyeth was negligent in failing to include a stronger warning on its label, and that she would not have taken the drug if the warning had been stronger. The district court conducted a bifurcated trial
before a single jury, with liability determined first and punitive damages determined second. In the first phase, the jury found for plaintiff and awarded $2.7 million in compensatory damages. In the second phase, the same jury determined that defendant was liable for punitive damages of $19.4 million. Wyeth LLC v. Scroggin, 554 F.Supp.2d 571 (E.D. Ark. 2008). On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit overturned the punitive damages award, ruling that the award was tainted by the admission of improper evidence during the punitive damages phase of the trial. But rather than ordering an entirely new trial, the appeals court ordered a partial new trial limited to punitive damages only. Scroggin v. Wyeth, 586 F.3d 547 (8th Cir.2009).

Wyeth is seeking Supreme Court review of the denial of its request for an entirely new trial.  Permitting a tort plaintiff to preserve his compensatory damages award at the same time that he pursues punitive damages before a separate jury is unfair to defendants, and it is likely to lead to increases in punitive damages awards. Partial retrials limited to punitive damages violate jury trial rights protected by the Seventh Amendment. The Petition for Cert here, 78 USLW 3566 (3/16/10), describes in detail the sharply conflicting views of the federal appeals courts regarding the circumstances under which partial retrials in jury cases are consistent with the Seventh Amendment, both generally, and specifically with respect to partial retrials confined to punitive damages. It is fair to say some lower courts have struggled to apply the Seventh Amendment standards set forth in Supreme Court precedent, and that the appeals courts have adopted divergent and irreconcilable approaches.

The Washington Legal Foundation submitted an amicus brief on this issue. In its brief urging the Supreme Court to grant review, WLF argued that the Seventh Amendment prohibits such partial retrials limited to punitive damages. WLF argued that the Seventh Amendment “right to trial by jury” has long been understood to constitute those jury trial rights that existed under the English common law when the Seventh Amendment was adopted in 1791. At common law there was no practice of setting aside a verdict in part. If the verdict was erroneous as to any issue, a new trial was directed as to all issues, so that all related issues could be decided by a single jury. Where the issue to be re-tried is related to issues already decided by the first jury, partial retrials create a danger that the second jury will be confused when told that some issues have already been decided.  WLF has argued that in this case the principal issue at any retrial on punitive damages (whether defendant acted sufficiently culpably in failing to provide stronger cancer warnings to merit a punitive award) is substantially similar to an issue decided in the first trial (whether it acted sufficiently culpably in failing to provide stronger cancer warnings to merit an award of compensatory damages).  The similarity of the two issues creates a significant danger of jury confusion, and the Seventh Amendment requires the plaintiff either to accept $2.7 million as her total compensation or to retry her entire case before a new jury.

WLF notes that considerable empirical evidence suggests that permitting partial retrials regarding punitive damages exacerbates the unpredictability of punitive damages awards. Moreover, the evidence suggests that permitting such partial retrials is a considerable disadvantage to tort defendants, who on average are likely to face larger monetary judgments than if a single jury considers all related tort claims.

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Some good news and a little bragging. A trial team from led by my partner Diane Sullivan obtained a defense jury verdict for AstraZeneca in the first Seroquel trial to go to verdict.  A New Jersey state court jury ruled this week that the global pharmaceutical company did not fail to adequately warn the plaintiff's treating doctors of the alleged side effects of the drug. 

The case, Baker v. AstraZeneca, was the first Seroquel product liability case to go to trial from the mass tort that includes thousands of cases. The majority of cases have been coordinated for pre-trial purposes in an MDL created by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, pending in the Middle District of Florida. In addition, there are large groups of cases pending in coordinated state-court proceedings in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.  The previous nine cases set for trial have been dismissed by federal or state trial court judges, on Daubert motions and accompanying summary judgment motions -- with Dechert lawyers leading the joint-defense effort for AstraZeneca in its meritorious legal motion practice. Approximately 2,600 additional cases have been abandoned by the plaintiffs' attorneys.

Plaintiff's core allegation was that taking Seroquel caused him to get diabetes. The jury did not have to reach the issues arising from the evidence suggesting that plaintiff had many pre-existing risk factors and was already at a significantly increased risk of diabetes before he first took the medication.

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Readers of MassTortDefense know how significant the earliest few trials in any mass tort can be, influencing later trials and shaping settlement strategies.  Accordingly, which cases go first, from among the hundreds or thousands in the mass tort, and how they are tried, can be extremely significant.  The federal court overseeing the MDL concerning the antibiotic Levaquin recently denied plaintiffs' motion to consolidate three bellwether cases for the first trial. In re Levaquin Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 08-1943, (D. Minn.). 

In the Order, the court noted that it had initially selected fifteen cases for evaluation and initial case-specific fact discovery in the bellwether-selection process. Directed by the court to meet and confer on an ordering of these cases for the first trials, the parties narrowed the field to seven remaining bellwether cases for selection for trial. Plaintiffs then moved to consolidate three of the cases for the first trial.  They asserted that the cases share similar characteristics that are central to this litigation and that consolidation would promote judicial efficiency and the interests of justice, while testing the merits of plaintiffs’ arguments. Defendants opposed the motion, arguing that plaintiffs had not met their burden of showing that a consolidated trial’s benefits would outweigh individual
issues in the case. Specifically, defendants argued that individual issues – including each
plaintiff’s unique medical history, each prescribing physician’s knowledge of warnings in the Levaquin package insert, and each plaintiff’s alleged injuries – precluded consolidation.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(a)(2) affords a court broad discretion to consolidate for trial actions involving common questions of law or fact. The party seeking consolidation bears the burden of showing that consolidation would promote judicial convenience and economy. Consolidation is inappropriate, however, if it leads to inefficiency, inconvenience, or unfair prejudice to a party.

Plaintiffs also argued that judicial economy would be served by consolidation because common sources of evidence established the supposedly common facts. For example, the same generic
expert witnesses would testify on behalf of each individual plaintiff, and the regulatory and
corporate history of the drug is the same for each plaintiff. Because of these alleged commonalities and claimed efficiencies, plaintiffs argued that consolidation of the three cases would save the court twenty trial days, not insignificant.
 
In opposition, defendants argued that individual issues, including what dose of Levaquin each physician prescribed to treat each plaintiff’s infection, and each individual plaintiff’s medical history, including their various risk factors for the injury alleged such as age, concomitant medication use including corticosteroids, prior injury, and other factors, all made consolidation inappropriate.

Moreover, defendants argued that consolidation would be prejudicial to them because there are complicated causation issues in each case, and multiple plaintiffs would testify regarding similar injuries, which could cause jury confusion. See In re Consol. Parlodel Litig., 182 F.R.D. 441, 447 (D.N.J. 1999) (“A consolidated trial . . . would compress critical evidence of specific causation and
marketing to a level which would deprive [the defendant] of a fair opportunity to defend itself.”).

At this stage of the MDL, the court concluded, consolidation was not merited. With respect to
the consolidation of cases, the Manual for Complex Litigation notes, “If there are few prior verdicts, judgments, or settlements, additional information may be needed to determine whether aggregation is appropriate. The need for such information may lead a judge to require a number of single-plaintiff, single-defendant trials, or other small trials.” Manual for Complex Litigation § 22.314, at 359 (4th ed. 2004). In the mass tort involving breast implants, the courts noted that that “[u]ntil enough trials have occurred so that the contours of various types of claims within the . . .
litigation are known, courts should proceed with extreme caution in consolidating claims.” In re Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 975 S.W.2d 601, 603 (Tex. 1998).

To date, there are over 240 federal court cases in this MDL and just under 100 state court cases addressing claims similar to those brought by the bellwether plaintiffs. Indeed, this is a still growing MDL, found the court, the exact factual and legal contours of which are still undefined. The parties continue to conduct critical discovery, including deposing plaintiffs’ prescribing physicians. The merits of the parties’ arguments have not been tested at trial or in dispositive motions.

The court recognized that "the stakes are high" because the initial bellwether trials in this MDL may serve as the basis for the parties’ resolution of remaining, pending cases. Thus, although plaintiffs
appear to have demonstrated some commonalities in fact and law among the three
individual plaintiffs’ cases, this motion was denied at this time. 

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Many a reader of MassTortDefense has wondered and worried about whether jurors were following a court's admonishment not to see or read anything about the issues in a case outside of the court room.  Sequestration is rare, especially in a civil case. (The O. J. Simpson jury was sequestered for eight and a half months.)  And with the advent of the Internet, jurors have potential access not only to publicity about the actual trial, but fingertip access to research tools on any issue in the case. Some of the same concerns arise with potential jurors; it may be impossible to ask enough specific questions in the voir dire process to ferret out every such issue.

A recent take on this comes in Russo v. Takata Corp., 2009 WL 2963065 (S.D. 9/16/09).  The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that a potential juror's Google search of a defendant seat belt manufacturer, and his conversation about his findings with other jurors during deliberations, warranted a new trial.

Plaintiffs' decedent was a  sixteen year old driver of her mother's vehicle, on the way to school. The vehicle crossed the centerline, traveled back into its lane of traffic, slid sideways off of the shoulder of the road, and rolled almost three times down a steep ravine before hitting a tree. The girl was killed.  Plaintiffs alleged that the seat belt unlatched due to inertial forces acting on the buckles during the rollover. General Motors Corporation and Suzuki Motor Corporation settled their respective claims before trial.

Takata, the manufacturer of the model TK-52 seat belts installed in the vehicle, denied Plaintiffs' claims. Takata proceeded to trial under the theory that the decedent did not buckle her seat belt before the crash, and that she negligently failed to maintain control over the vehicle. Takata also denied that inertial unlatching of the model TK-52 seat belts was possible in real world accidents.
 

Takata filed a motion in limine seeking to exclude or limit evidence on alleged prior seat belt failures. The trial court determined that such evidence was “relevant solely to the issue of notice regarding the alleged defect” and irrelevant to whether a defect actually existed in the seat belt involved in this case. It then limited the evidence of prior alleged accidents, claims, and lawsuits to the issue of notice.

At trial, Plaintiffs presented evidence that other drivers or passengers had experienced seat belt failures in the past. Some of the witnesses were uncertain whether their seat belt was manufactured by Takata, or whether notification given to General Motors was passed on to Takata. Evidence was also presented to the jury that ten other lawsuits had been filed against Takata alleging seatbelt malfunctions. The jury was instructed that evidence of other lawsuits and complaints was “only for the purpose of establishing whether Takata had notice of the alleged defect.”

During deliberations, one juror asked out loud whether Takata had ever been sued. A juror (Flynn, according to the opinion) responded that he had done a Google search and had learned that Takata manufactured seat belts and airbags but did not find any lawsuits during his search. The entire exchange lasted approximately three to five minutes, and no report was made to the trial court concerning Flynn's remarks. The jury deliberated for approximately another one and one-half hours before reaching a verdict for Takata.  Plaintiffs later filed a Motion for New Trial alleging juror misconduct. Affidavits from ten jurors were filed with the motion.

The state Supreme Court noted it was announcing no hard and fast rule that all such types of Internet research by a juror prior to trial without notice to the court and counsel automatically doom a jury's verdict. Rather, the court gave deference to the trial court, which had the distinct advantage of being present throughout the nineteen-day trial. The trial court was in the best position to determine whether material was extrinsic to the issues before the jury, or whether the extraneous material prejudiced the jury. The trial court's award of a new trial was affirmed.
 

The reasoning: statutory language in many jurisdictions limits the type of information that a juror may be asked to provide via an affidavit or under oath at a hearing on a motion for new trial.  And that's the only way, typically, for a litigant to show juror conduct.  The prohibition on admitting testimony and affidavits pertains to intrinsic information, which includes statements or discussions which took place during deliberations.  Testimony and affidavits concerning extrinsic information, however, may be obtained from a juror.  Extrinsic information includes media publicity, conversations between jurors and non-jurors, and evidence not admitted by the court.  It also includes “knowledge relevant to the facts in issue not obtained through the introduction of evidence but acquired prior to trial, experiments, investigations, news media, etc.”   Secondly, the type of after-acquired information that potentially taints a jury verdict should be carefully distinguished from the general knowledge, opinions, feelings and bias that every juror carries into the jury room.

Takata argued that the information Flynn obtained during his Google searches was not extrinsic  because it was obtained before trial and was discoverable through voir dire.  As such, Takata argued it should have been explored during voir dire. The court found that Takata's argument that Plaintiffs could have asked more probing questions and possibly discovered Flynn's prior knowledge was likely valid. Takata's argument, however, missed the mark, said the court, in that Flynn obtained the information (that no lawsuits were listed on Takata's home page) after receiving his jury summons; that fact was specific to the defendant and relevant to evidence that was admitted at trial for a limited purpose under a carefully crafted order.  It pertained to the issue of knowledge of a defect with the TK-52 seat belt, an issue hotly contested between the parties, and it directly contradicted the evidence admitted at trial under the trial court's limiting order. This was not simply information that Flynn obtained in passing from media outlets prior to his awareness that a suit against defendants was pending.  The juror apparently sought out the information specifically in response to the receipt of the summons in which the names of the defendants were first made known to him, observed the court.

The burden of persuasion as to prejudice is on the party seeking a new trial. The trial court concluded as a matter of law that Flynn's extrinsic information prejudiced the jury's verdict. The information was presented to jurors at an arguably critical juncture during deliberations, and it had a tendency to influence the jury in a manner inconsistent with the evidence and the instructions of the trial court. Extrinsic information that goes beyond the mental processes of one juror and becomes known to other jurors can prejudice a jury verdict and affect the substantial rights of the party seeking a new trial. At least four jurors, including Flynn, were involved in the conversation in which Flynn revealed his Google search. While all jurors agreed that the jury did not discuss the Google search as a panel during deliberations, the state Supreme Court did not require that the entire jury be exposed to extrinsic information in order to proceed to determine whether there was prejudicial effect.

Takata argued on appeal that the verdict on the defect claims had already been put to a vote, and the jury found that her seatbelt was not defective. Plaintiffs argued in response that the jury verdict form had not been signed at the time Flynn made his remarks. Thus, they concluded the jury had yet to reach a final verdict at the time in question.

The state high court found that the trial court was in the best position to determine which claims had been dealt with and which ones remained to be discussed by the jury at the time of Flynn's comments. It concluded that the issue of whether the seat belts were defective and whether Takata had notice was "still in play" at the time Flynn revealed his Internet searches to members of the jury.

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Judge Engelhardt of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, overseeing the MDL relating to the alleged formaldehyde contamination of FEMA trailers used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has chosen a lawsuit by a New Orleans woman and her son to serve as the first bellwether case in this MDL. See In re: FEMA Trailer Formaldehyde Products Liability Litigation, MDL-1873 (E.D. La.).  Plaintiffs generally allege that trailers issued by the government following Hurricane Katrina exposed residents to high levels of the chemical formaldehyde.

The court had ordered the parties to submit the names of no less than 50 potential bellwether trial plaintiffs. From these names, one plaintiff for each of four bellwether jury trials was to  be selected. The manufacturer defendants for these four trials had to be the four estimated to have the most emergency housing units at issue in this proceeding. (These four manufacturers are Gulf Stream, Fleetwood, Forest River, and Keystone RV.)  Only plaintiffs who have identified and sued one of the four manufacturers, the relevant contractor, and the Government, were eligible to serve as bellwether trial plaintiffs. In addition, the bellwether plaintiffs must be selected from those plaintiffs for whom Plaintiff Fact Sheets already have been obtained and provided to the defendants. In addition, actions chosen for bellwether trials must have proper venue in the Eastern District of Louisiana, unless the parties in question consent to trial in this district.  The court, from that list, selected the case brought by Alana Alexander and Christopher Cooper against Gulf Stream Coach Inc. to be the first that will be tried in federal court. The trial is set for Sept. 14, with three other cases against the other different defendants scheduled to follow as the court approached the hundreds of suits through a series of bellwether trials.

Readers will recall that last December, the court properly refused to grant class certification to the six proposed subclasses of plaintiffs, finding they did not meet the standards required for class certification under Rule 23. The plaintiffs had sought certification of four state subclasses of individuals who resided in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as a future medical monitoring subclass, and an economic loss subclass.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated a number of suits against the
government and a handful of trailer manufacturers over the alleged formaldehyde exposure
in October 2007, despite defendants’ objections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  released in 2008 the results of a study which it commissioned concerning formaldehyde levels in mobile homes provided to residents of the Gulf Coast affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  CDC has been working with FEMA and other agencies to investigate possible levels of formaldehyde in the trailers and mobile homes.
 

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Jurors in Oakland, CA., concluded last week that welding products manufacturers were not liable for any neurological impairments suffered by a long-time welder. See Thomas v. A.O. Smith Corp., at al. (Calif. Super. Ct., Alameda Cty.).The trial lasted about 3 weeks, and the Alameda County jury delivered its verdict after approximately three and a half hours of deliberations. Judge Robert B. Freedman presided. Trial defendants included Lincoln Electric Co., ESAB Group, and Hobart Brothers Co.

The Thomas trial marks the first time allegations that a worker became ill from exposure to welding rod fumes has been heard by a California state court jury. Thomas had alleged that welding rod manufacturers knew that welding fumes were toxic and failed to adequately warn of the risk of neurological disorders. As a result of his exposure, Thomas alleged he suffered severe physical and emotional injuries.

On the eve of trial, Judge Freedman had denied defense motions to exclude testimony by Thomas’ medical experts and industrial hygienist, but granted a motion to preclude a plaintiff warning expert from offering an opinion as to whether defendants had a duty to warn or on the effectiveness of defendants’ warning labels.

Judge Freedman also barred plaintiffs from making pejorative references to the “welding industry,” or making plaintiffs' typical, inappropriate comparisons to tobacco or asbestos companies. However, the judge denied a defense motion to prevent plaintiffs from referring to defendants’ lobbying activities.

The jury’s finding was that welding fumes did not cause the plaintiff’s injury, and this seems to support what defendants have contended: there is no sufficient link between welding fumes and Parkinson’s disease. By our count that is 22 of the last 26 verdicts for defendants in this mass tort.
 

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