Readers may not have seen that former U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein passed away this week at the age of 99.
He sat on the Eastern District of New York bench from 1967 to 2020, having been nominated to the bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He presided over a number of landmark and significant matters, but readers of the MassTortDefense blog may know him best for a series of important rulings in the asbestos litigation, DES cases, tobacco claims, as well as the Agent Orange cases, covering class action issues, choice of law, the intersection with bankruptcy, general and specific causation, the government contractor defense, and more.
He didn’t always get it right (in our view or that of the Second Circuit) but his brilliance, reasoned analysis, and innovative efforts to manage mass tort litigation simply cannot be denied. RIP Judge.