Stephen McConnell

Firm/Organization: Reed Smith LLP

Latest Articles

Bair Hugger MDL Defendants Prevail on Daubert and Summary Judgment

By Stephen McConnell on September 18, 2019

Summer can be a good time to catch up on tv shows we missed the first time around (e.g., Dead to Me, Luther series 5, and Catch-22). It can also be a good time to catch up on cases we somehow failed to flag when they came out earlier in the year. We won’t beat ourselves up too much for missing the excellent result in the soon-to-be-frozen north in In re Bair Hugger Forced Air…

Drug & Device Law

PML Valsartan Order

By Stephen McConnell on September 11, 2019

Few things raise our blood pressure as much as the MDL process. MDL stands for Multi-District Litigation, but the M might as well stand for Mutilating and the D for Distorting. One-sided discovery, wholesale parking of ‘shotgun’ complaints, made-up spoliation issues, and bellwether trial programs that produce results representative of nothing other than plaintiff lawyer dreams all wreak havoc on our systolic and diastolic numbers. For a while we harbored hopes that the Joint Panel…

Drug & Device Law

C.D. Illinois Rejects Spoliation Claim for Lack of Special Relationship

By Stephen McConnell on September 4, 2019

Last week, we found ourselves focusing on spoliation issues in two different cases, one at the front-end (an early case assessment) and one at the back-end (haggling over jury instructions). The Actos spoliation saga has made any sentient defendant antsy about these things. Thus, it is worthwhile to discuss Moore v. Abiomed, Inc., 20 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147191 (C.D. Illinois Aug. 29, 2019), for its potentially helpful spoliation ruling, even if the rest of the…

Drug & Device Law

Mass Tort Plaintiffs Who Failed to Disclose Their Claims in Bankruptcy Court: Standing and Estoppel

By Stephen McConnell on August 28, 2019

We have blogged several times about mass tort plaintiffs who failed to list their tort claims in prior bankruptcy proceedings, thereby stiffing their creditors. See here, for example. Do they get away with it? Usually not. Courts have routinely sent those tort plaintiffs packing, and two different theories call for that result: (1) lack of standing, and (2) judicial estoppel. See, e.g., In re Taxotere (Docetaxel) Prod. Liab. Litig., 2018 WL 5016219, at *6-7…

Drug & Device Law

Hip Hip Hurray for D.Utah Rulings in Hip Implant Case

By Stephen McConnell on August 21, 2019

Today’s post looks at a case where a defendant was in the wrong place. You might say the same thing about us. As you read this, we are on summer holiday. Because our vacation almost always takes place, as it does this year, during the Drug and Device Son’s birthday, he has veto power over the itinerary. Consequently, year after year, we end up in the same corner of the world. It has something to…

Drug & Device Law

Taxotere Court Excludes Expert Opinion on How the Medical Community Would Have Reacted to a Different Warning

By Stephen McConnell on August 14, 2019

We write today about a partial exclusion of a plaintiff expert in the upcoming Taxotere bellwether trial. We have blogged about other aspects of the Taxotere litigation previously. (Here and here, for example.) The case is In re Taxotere (Docetaxel) Prods. Liability Litig., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130339 (E.D. La. Aug. 5, 2019). Taxotere is used to treat chemotherapy. The plaintiff alleged that it caused her to suffer permanent hair loss. Her legal…

Drug & Device Law

Silicone Implant Defendants Prevail on Fraudulent Joinder and Preemption

By Stephen McConnell on August 7, 2019

Offhand, we cannot think of opinions we have blogged on that pleased us more than today’s cases, Jacob v. Mentor Worldwide, LLC, et al., 2019 WL 3500325 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 1, 2019) and Vieira v. Mentor Worldwide, LLC, et al., 2019 WL 3500331 (Aug. 1, 2019). The two decisions are virtually identical and come out the right way on issues important to drug and device defendants, such as snap removals, fraudulent joinder, and preemption. The…

Drug & Device Law

W.D. Pennsylvania Dismisses Third-Party Complaint for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction

By Stephen McConnell on July 31, 2019

By now, the reinvigorated limits on personal jurisdiction, courtesy of the SCOTUS decisions in Bauman and BMS, are old hat. No longer can defendants be dragged into plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions unless they are either at home in such jurisdictions or actually did something relating to a colorable claim there. So goodbye to litigation tourists suing companies lacking the requisite connection to the forum. To borrow an unfortunate phrase of the moment, courts “send them back” to…

Drug & Device Law

Connecticut Trial Court Tosses Vaginal Mesh Case against Hospital

By Stephen McConnell on July 24, 2019

Our firm represents a couple of companies in the vaginal mesh MDL, so it is difficult for us to write on that, er, fascinating litigation. But one of our clients solved that problem for us by extricating itself from a lawsuit, leaving behind interesting issues about a hospital’s potential exposure in a product liability case. In Normandy v. American Medical Systems, et al., 2019 Conn. Super. LEXIS 1711 (CT Super. Ct. May 29, 2019), the…

Drug & Device Law

Judicial Involvement in the Settlement Process

By Stephen McConnell on July 17, 2019

Judges should … judge. They should decide legal issues. But some judges think their primary role is to “manage” litigation. It turns out that such management often means strong-arming parties into settlement. Is that appropriate? We wondered about that. We wondered it aloud. We wondered it in the presence of one of our Summer associates, Catherine Houseman (Temple 2020). She came up with research that we thought was interesting, so we will now share it…

Stephen McConnell

Bair Hugger MDL Defendants Prevail on Daubert and Summary Judgment

PML Valsartan Order

C.D. Illinois Rejects Spoliation Claim for Lack of Special Relationship

Mass Tort Plaintiffs Who Failed to Disclose Their Claims in Bankruptcy Court: Standing and Estoppel

Hip Hip Hurray for D.Utah Rulings in Hip Implant Case

Taxotere Court Excludes Expert Opinion on How the Medical Community Would Have Reacted to a Different Warning

Silicone Implant Defendants Prevail on Fraudulent Joinder and Preemption

W.D. Pennsylvania Dismisses Third-Party Complaint for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction

Connecticut Trial Court Tosses Vaginal Mesh Case against Hospital

Judicial Involvement in the Settlement Process

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