For comprehensive coverage of this week’s verdicts in lawsuits against Merck, see Point of Law. In particular, Ted corrects reporters who keep passing on ill-informed assertions that the Cona/McDarby results are going to preclude Merck from raising its earlier defenses in the thousands of Vioxx cases yet to come, and that that New Jersey cases are being heard in “Merck’s home court“.
Other things you’ve been missing if you don’t check our sister site regularly:
* New regular contributors include Larry Ribstein (Ideoblog), Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers), and Sam Munson (Manhattan Institute);
* Theodore Dalrymple on a new history of vaccine litigation;
* Jim Copland on Rep. Cynthia McKinney and a class action on behalf of Capitol police;
* Ted on the Supreme Court’s recent Dabit decision on state-court securities suits (here and here); and on a new med-mal study;
* Michael Krauss on a tort suit in the U.S. against ExxonMobil over abuses by the Indonesian military;
* Jonathan B. Wilson on offer-of-judgment reform in Georgia (and more); and joint-and-several-liability reform in Pennsylvania, just vetoed by that state’s Gov. Ed Rendell;
* Posts by me nominating an Arizona lawprof for “the worst and most tendentious analogy in the history of the liability debate”; on doctors’ Good Samaritan liability; a ruling in the New York school finance case, an AG who dissents from his brethren on the tobacco deal; the Rhode Island lead paint verdict (here, here, etc.); Seventh Circuit judge Diane Sykes criticizes the Wisconsin Supreme Court; and lost-overtime suits on behalf of $400,000-a-year stockbrokers. And, of course, much much more — bookmark the site today.