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Ethicon Media Monitoring 01/23/2017
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Pelvic Mesh Twitter Party This Friday
Jan 20, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
~Everybody is Tweeting, even our president-elect. So for those families impacted by pelvic mesh, here is a chance to figure out what Twitter is all about.Some mesh-injured women are really experts including Hash tags, @’s and compelling graphics. Friday January 20, is a big day... -
Product Liability Group Of The Year: Shook Hardy
Jan 20, 2017 | Law 360
By Shayna Posses
...Also in the medical device realm, the Shook Hardy team continued its successful representation of Boston Scientific in sprawling litigation involving its pelvic mesh products... -
Mass Tort Programs Saw Inventory Spike in 2016
Jan 20, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By Max Mitchell
The number of mass tort cases pending in Philadelphia's Complex Litigation Center at the start of 2017 has risen to its highest level in more than five years.
Client Attorney Privileged/Attorney Work Product/At Request of Counsel
Online Sources
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Pelvic Mesh Twitter Party This Friday
Jan 20, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
~Everybody is Tweeting, even our president-elect. So for those families impacted by pelvic mesh, here is a chance to figure out what Twitter is all about.
Some mesh-injured women are really experts including Hash tags, @’s and compelling graphics.
Friday January 20, is a big day for Twitter and mesh-impacted families.
Join in.
f you don’t know how to tweet, go into the pages of Mesh News Desk or find a mesh-related story and hit the little Twitter bird, that will send it to Twitter.
You don’t even need an account but signing up is also very simple.
(Here’s one Pelvic Mesh 101: The Basics http://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/mesh-101-basics/ (find the twitter bird at the bottom of the story); or this one Reporters Resource on Covering Mesh Issues, (again look at bottom of story for the little blue Twitter bird, http://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/reporters-resource-on-covering-mesh-issues/)
Friday Twitter Parties
Have become a regular event Friday evenings between 8-11 pm EST. You are invited to join in this Friday, all day, January 20th.
Here are some hash tags regularly used:
#JNJHurtWomen, #JNJhurtsforprofit, @MeshAwareness, #FDA, @JNJcares and #JNJNews.
Don’t think J&J didn’t notice, in fact, a tweet claiming to be The Johnson & Johnson Team even replied to Tweets last year.
Check out Jan Urban on Twitter
https://twitter.com/JanUrban12
Use these Twitter symbols:
#MedicalDevices
#Mesh
#essure
@Mesh_Problems
@meshdevicenews
#CleanUpThisMesh
#MeshAwareness
#GettheMeshOut
#JustSayNo2Meshhttp://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/pelvic-mesh-twitter-party-friday/
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Product Liability Group Of The Year: Shook Hardy
Jan 20, 2017 | Law 360
By Shayna Posses
From continuing its successful representation of Philip Morris in Florida tobacco suits to gutting multidistrict litigation over Bayer Healthcare’s intrauterine device Mirena, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP’s product liability team has cemented its spot among Law360’s Product Liability Groups of the Year for the second year in a row.
The firm boasts likely the largest product liability practice in the country, if not the world, putting 329 attorneys to work securing victories for major players in a slew of industries, from auto giants like Ford to all of the top 10 drug companies in the United States.
Getting to know their clients' companies and industries has been a longtime priority for Shook Hardy, firm Chair Madeleine M. McDonough said.
“One of the things that I think set us apart decades ago — and it's just continued every year since — is we get to know them, their product, the industry, whatever’s going on in their world,” she said.
Another defining characteristic is the firm's employment of about 111 nonattorney analysts and experts with advanced degrees in fields like genetics, toxicology and biochemistry, partner Robert T. Adams said.
These professionals really set the firm apart to clients and are a tremendous tool for attorneys as well, serving as in-house experts who can develop a wealth of information about the issues at hand and track down the foremost experts in the field to help achieve great results, Adams said.
McDonough added, “They’re just remarkably valuable to help attorneys get up to speed on the specifics of the case and then to really dig into the science right away. It really gives us a leg up on these litigations that are so scientific and technological.”Securing tremendous results in complicated litigation is an area where the firm excels, evidenced by Bayer’s July 2016 victory in multidistrict litigation brought by women claiming they were injured by its Mirena device.
The Shook Hardy team first helped secure an order excluding the women's general and specific causation experts, with U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel concluding in March that they were unqualified or unreliable.
This set the stage for the final blow: In July, the New York federal judge held that the lack of expert testimony made it impossible to prove that Mirena can cause injuries after insertion, wiping out the MDL’s more than 1,200 suits.
Also in the medical device realm, the Shook Hardy team continued its successful representation of Boston Scientific in sprawling litigation involving its pelvic mesh products. Boston Scientific has been the most successful of all the mesh manufacturers facing claims, with Shook Hardy serving as lead counsel for the company on a number of cases, Adams said.
Of the 17 pelvic mesh cases that have been tried to verdict so far, Shook Hardy teams have secured four of the five defense verdicts, including two over the past year, according to the firm.
Adams tried one of those cases before a Missouri state jury, a suit brought by a woman named Eve Sherrer alleging that Boston Scientific’s Solyx device and C.R. Bard’s Align device left her incontinent and suffering from pain and other ailments.
It was a strong case for the plaintiff pending in a difficult jurisdiction for defendants, the attorney said. But Shook Hardy helped land a favorable verdict in February 2016, with the jury finding that the companies weren’t liable.
“The Sherrer case was really an important win, not only for Boston Scientific, but really for all companies that produce mesh,” Adams said. “I think it sent a pretty good message that these cases can be tried and won in extremely difficult jurisdictions.”
The Shook Hardy team also continued its successful representation of Philip Morris in so-called Engle progeny cases in Florida, often helping the company escape, or score significant reductions in, liability with its work on nine trials over the past year.
The suits are among the thousands that stemmed from the Florida Supreme Court decertifying the Engle class action in 2006 and overturning a $145 billion verdict.
In doing so, the justices allowed scores of plaintiffs to rely on the jury’s findings to file suits of their own and gave them “tremendous advantages that they wouldn’t ordinarily have the benefit of in a regular tobacco case that might get filed anywhere else around the country,” said partner William Geraghty, who regularly handles Engle cases for Philip Morris.
At the same time, the defense attorneys are up against some of the best plaintiffs’ lawyers in the state of Florida, Geraghty said.
“The odds are stacked against us, so whenever you get a very good result, it’s a rewarding experience,” he said.
This spirit of wanting to try and win big cases is one of the things that attracts clients to the firm, Adams said.
“Frankly, there’s such a culture here focused around litigation and trial practice, regardless of whether its products liability or other litigation... that exists,” he said. “And I think it drives people to achieve great results.”--Additional reporting by Jeff Overley, John Kennedy and Brandon Lowrey. Editing by Jack Karp.
https://www.law360.com/articles/882656/product-liability-group-of-the-year-shook-hardy
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Mass Tort Programs Saw Inventory Spike in 2016
Jan 20, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By Max Mitchell
The number of mass tort cases pending in Philadelphia's Complex Litigation Center at the start of 2017 has risen to its highest level in more than five years.
According to the First Judicial District's latest figures regarding the court's mass torts inventory, the number of cases pending in mass tort programs has risen for the third year in a row, and has surpassed the number of cases pending in 2012 when the court began implementing changes aimed at clearing its mass tort inventory.
The number of cases pending in the inventory as of Jan. 1, according to the court, is 6,196. That includes 5,601 pharmaceutical cases, and 595 asbestos cases. The number is a 15.6 percent increase over the 5,320 that were pending at the start of 2016, and 22 more cases than the inventory saw at the start of 2012.
However, despite the growth of the overall inventory, the number of out-of-state plaintiffs filing pharmaceutical cases in the Complex Litigation Center is at its lowest point in more than 10 years.
According to the numbers, of the 1,329 pharmaceutical cases filed in 2016, 990, or 74 percent, were by plaintiffs from outside Pennsylvania. That number is a nearly 10 percent drop from 2015, when 81 percent of the cases were filed by out-of-state plaintiffs, and a 20 percent drop from 2014, when plaintiffs from outside Pennsylvania filed 89 percent of the pharmaceutical cases.
For asbestos cases, the number of out-of-state plaintiffs rose slightly from 33 percent in 2015 to 35 percent in 2016.
A total of 1,615 new cases were filed during 2016, according to the court's statistics, which is an increase of 327 cases, or more than 25 percent, over the 1,288 that were filed in 2015.
The numbers come about five years after the Complex Litigation Center made some administrative changes aimed at clearing out the court's clogged mass tort program. Some of the changes included ending reverse bifurcation of cases, and restricting the consolidation of pharmaceutical cases.
The largest percentage of cases making up the inventory deal with Reglan, but the inventory of cases over the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal is not far behind. The Reglan cases make up nearly 34 percent of the inventory, while Risperdal makes up more than 31 percent of the collective mass tort docket. In 2015, 43 percent of the inventory were Reglan cases, and Risperdal made up slightly more than 26 percent.
Although Risperdal had an increase of 550 cases over 2016, or a nearly 40 percent jump, cases over the blood thinner Xarelto saw the biggest increase, with 664 new cases, or a leap of 121 percent, during 2016.
The largest decrease came in the Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella program. That could be because in August 2015 those drugmakers agreed to a nearly $57 million settlement over claims that the birth control pills caused blood clots.
The Reglan program saw the second-largest drop of inventory, losing 127 cases over 2016, while the pelvic mesh program decreased by 16 cases to 164 pending at the start of 2017.
Although the number of filings were up over the past 12 month, 2016 also marked a year where courts were reluctant to consolidate related suits into any new mass tort programs.
In February, the court rejected a request to consolidate litigation over the antibiotic Levaquin, and the following month, the court denied the plaintiff's bid to establish a mass tort for numerous testosterone replacement therapy drugs. More than 100 plaintiffs with claims over the diabetes drug Invokana also sought mass tort status in 2016. The Invokana defendants, however, removed those cases to federal court, but the plaintiffs are still fighting to have their suits sent back to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
The latest court statistics also show that the mass tort cases were not disposed of as quickly in 2016 as they were in years prior.
According to the numbers, 39.4 percent of cases were disposed of within 20 to 25 months in 2016, compared with nearly 74 percent of the cases in 2015 being disposed of within that same time period. Singling out pharmaceutical cases, slightly more than 33 percent of them were disposed of within 20 to 25 months in 2016, while more than 86 percent were disposed of during that same time period in 2015.
http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/id=1202777328317/Mass-Tort-Programs-Saw-Inventory-Spike-in-2016?mcode=1202617075166&curindex=0&curpage=ALL
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