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We all know that the pandemic has impacted a number of aspects of litigation, especially trials, but what is going on with filings.  In federal court, trial courts saw about 30% more pending cases as of June 30 than at the same time last year.  The increase comes mostly from personal injury and product liability cases, according to the recent statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
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Continue Reading Report on Federal Caseload and Trials

The federal Judicial Conference recently recommended a series of reforms to increase security for judges.  This comes in the wake of the tragic attack at the home of a federal jurist in New Jersey.

The measures approved by the Judicial Conference:

  • Seek legislation to enhance the protection of judges’ personally identifiable information, particularly on the

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The short opinion in Stirling v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., 2020 WL 4259035 (Idaho Dist. Ct., July 13, 2020), comes at the intersection of personal jurisdiction rules and innovator liability claims.  As readers will recall, plaintiffs who allege injury from ingestion of a generic version of a prescription drug cannot prevail on a failure to…

Roy Hobbs returned to baseball after 16 years; Grover Cleveland returned to the White House after a four year hiatus, and Gen. MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944.  Perhaps with less drama and certainly less fanfare, your humble blogger returns with today’s post on MassTortDefense.

A California federal judge recently denied the motion by customers of a San Francisco fertility clinic seeking class certification of their claims alleging that a defective storage tank damaged their embryos.  The case, In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation, No. 3:18-cv-01586, 2020 WL 3432689 (N.D. Cal. June 23, 2020), is interesting for the court’s treatment of superiority and damages issues in the class context.

Pacific Fertility provides fertility services including egg and embryo cryopreservation. Cryopreservation involves preservation of tissue using cooling techniques. In 2018, there was an apparent incident where one of the storage tanks lost coolant for a period of time. At the time of the incident, the tank contained eggs and embryos from 600+Pacific Fertility customers. All these eggs and embryos were exposed to the temperature increase. Plaintiffs were notified, and eventually sued.

We will skip the procedural history up to the point where Plaintiffs sought certification of a class of: All individuals, and their reproductive partners, whose eggs or embryos were in Tank 4 at Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco, California on the date of the incident.…
Continue Reading Class Certification Denied in Cryopreservation Litigation