The Law Blog of Plaintiff's Attorney Max Kennerly
Did Halliburton improperly cement the drill hole at Deepwater Horizon? Did Transocean fail to activate the blowout preventer — or were the shear rams too weak to crimp pipes designed for deepwater drilling? Why didn’t BP have any contingency planning in place for a spill of this magnitude?
Whatever the cause, my hometown of Ocean Springs…
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes
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Yesterday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Shady Grove v. Allstate.
On the whole, the issue was quite simple:
New York law prohibits class actions in suits seeking penalties or statutory minimum damages. We consider whether this precludes a federal district court sitting in diversity from entertaining a class action under Federal Rule
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Kevin LaCroix at The D&O Diary reports,
On March 24, 2010, Cornerstone Research released its annual study of securities class action lawsuit settlements. The most recent study, which is entitled "Securities Class Action Settlements: 2009 Review and Analysis" and is written by Ellen M. Ryan and Laura E. Simmons, can be found here. Cornerstone’s
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Last week, Prof. Edward A. Hartnett (of Seton Hall University School of Law) posted Responding to Twombly and Iqbal: Where Do We Go from Here?
Hartnett’s idea was eminently reasonable:
I also offer my own proposal, which focuses on the core issue at stake in debates about Twombly and Iqbal: should a plaintiff be able to
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Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Bruesewitz v. Wyeth. The case will decide:
Whether Section 22(b)(1) of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 — which expressly preempts certain design defect claims against vaccine manufacturers “if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine
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It’s no secret: plaintiffs like state court and defendants like federal court.
The reasons include:
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Before Ashcroft v. Iqbal improperly re-wrote the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly foolishly imposed a new hurdle for plaintiffs who brought antitrust claims. Specifically, in Twombly the Supreme Court held,
In applying these general standards to a §1 claim [e.g., a price-fixing claim], we hold that stating such
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Oh, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, will we ever stop blogging about you?
The newest online debate pits the class action defense lawyers at Drug & Device Law against University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Stephen Burbank at PENNumbra, the online supplement to UPenn’s Law Review.
Beck and Herrmann open with a defense of Iqbal…
"Removal" is the process by which a defendant in a state court case "removes" the case to federal court. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) makes it sound so simple:
Any civil action of which the district courts have original jurisdiction founded on a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United
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