Products Liability Series: What is Arkansas' Law on Joint and Several Liability?
Arkansas limits a judgment against a defendant to no more than its proportional share of the damages. In other words, damages are allocated to a defendant in direct proportion to that defendant’s percentage of fault. For example, when a product manufacturer and a product seller are found to be 10%…
Skilled Lawyering Saves Defendant from Default Judgment in Products Liability Lawsuit
In a products liability lawsuit against the manufacturer and seller, a plaintiff asserted claims of strict products liability, breach of warranty, negligence, gross negligence, and consumer fraud. One defendant filed a successful motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and was dismissed from…
MDLs and Bellwether Trials: What are they?
What is an MDL? And, what is a bellwether trial? (The name certainly is funny and – at first glance – tells you nothing about the type of trial it seeks to describe.) How are MDLs and bellwether trials related? What purpose do they serve? These were all questions I found myself asking when I first…
FDA Gives Certain Electronic Cigarette Manufacturers 60 Days to Address Youth Vaping
On September 12, 2018, Food & Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., addressed the epidemic of youth e-cigarette use, indicating that the FDA will halt sales of certain flavored e-cigarettes if the major manufacturers cannot show the agency that they are doing enough to keep them…
Defense Verdict in Third Xarelto Bellwether Trial
On Friday, August 18, 2017, following a two-week trial, a Mississippi jury returned a defense verdict in the third of four bellwether trials scheduled in the In re: Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) Products Liability Litigation MDL proceedings. After a little over three hours of deliberations, the jury found…