It is 1 to 1 and we now move to federal court for round 3 in the Vioxx wars. The first federal trial is in Houston, where Jere Beasley from Alabama will serve as lead counsel for the plaintiffs and Phil Beck from Chicago will serve as lead counsel for the defendants.
The trial starts November 29, 2005. Read more here.
The federal trial was orginally set for trial in New Orleans but had to be moved because of Katrina.
The jury in the NJ Vioxx case retired for deliberations at short time ago (it is now 2:35 CDT). Here is a summary of Chris’ closing argument.
The Tennessee Supreme Court has decided Brown v. Crown Equipment Co., a case that asked the Court to give us a further understanding of the McDaniel opinion on expert testimony that it released a few years ago. Brown involves an injury related to a forklift; the trial judge excluded two of the experts offered by the plaintiff and directed a verdict in favor of the defendant. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed and remanded for trial. The Court said:
“In McDaniel, we listed several nonexclusive factors that courts could consider in determining the reliability of scientific testimony, including
Closing arguments are today – read this article from Bloomberg for the latest summary of recent events and thoughts of other lawyers about the case.
Closing arguments in the New Jersey Vioxx trial are expected to begin on Monday, according to news reports. The lawyers are working with the trial judge on jury instructions today. The trial has lasted seven weeks.
Predictably, there has not been as much press about this case as the one in Texas, although that will change next week. This case is a “must win” for Merck.
A group of plaintiffs lawyers have formed a “dream team” to take on Merck in Vioxx litigation. Merck has said it will defend every case individually, but now a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers has said they will band together and will press for a continuous trial schedule so that plaintiffs can get their cases heard. The cases will be heard in state court, outside the federal MDL. One leader of the group is Mark Lanier, lead counsel in the Texas case.
The group says they control some 20,000 cases, only 10% of which have been filed to date.
A recent edition of the journal of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel article called “Handling Difficult Issues in Products Liability Actions: Subsequent Remedial Measures, Similar Accidents, Recalls, and Foreign Defendants.” It is written by Bradley C. Nahrstadt.
The well-written article has a nice collection of cases from around the country on the stated topics. The author describes the article this way:
“The purpose of this article is to apprise defense counsel of three potentially fatal areas of pre-trial discovery and trial testimony in products liability actions – evidence of subsequent remedial measures, evidence of other accidents, and evidence of product recalls – and to provide suggestions regarding alternate ways to deal with such evidence. The final section of this article will discuss some interesting issues that often arise when defense counsel represents a foreign product manufacturer or distributor.”
Ford Motor Company apparently says one thing in the courtroom and another thing in press conferences.
This news article says that Ford’s PR people keep saying that Ford did dynamic testing of its vehicles but that its witnesses at a recent trial said they did not. When asked to explain the discrepency, the Ford folks refused comment.
And now, of course, Ford is trying to seal the courtroom records.
Here is the latest on the New Jersey Vioxx trial.
My guess is that we will have a verdict next week.
Bryant Flury alleged that he was injured when his air bag failed to open. He brought suit against the manufacturer of the truck he was driving at the time of the one vehicle accident. He won a $250,000 jury verdict.
The manufacturer appealed on several grounds, including that the subject vehicle was destroyed before the manufacturer had an opportunity to inspect it. The vehicle had been stored at Flury’s home but State Farm, the vehicle’s insurer, had taken the vehicle from the home and sold it for its salvage value.
The trial judge told the jury that if it found that the plaintiff was responsible for the loss of the vehicle a rebuttable presumption arose that the vehicle was not defective. The 11th Circuit reversed the verdict, saying that the loss of the vehicle was the sole fault of the plaintiff and that the only appropriate sanction was dismissal of the action.
Day on Torts