It’s a tale as old as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA"): defendant Janssen Pharmaceuticals sent out a fax reporting on the reclassification of its drug Levaquin for insurance purposes. The plaintiff sued it for violating the TCPA, claiming the fax was an advertisement; Janssen responded that the content of the fax was informational.
bifurcation
The New Bifurcation – Pieloor v. Gate City Bank (D.N.D. 2012)
Amber Pieloor filed a class action against her bank, the Gate City Bank of North Dakota. She accused the bank of re-sequencing a number of her financial transactions. Re-sequencing occurs when a bank records transactions in an order other than that in which they were received. Accusing banks of re-sequencing has become common; and…
The Risks of Bifurcation – Book Review: All the Justice Money Can Buy
There’s a fascinating strategic story buried deep within Snigdha Prakash’s book on the early Vioxx litigation, All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial. It’s revealed in two passages, one toward the beginning of the book, one toward the end.
At the beginning of the book (and the trial it covers), New…
Classic Cases – In re Rhone-Poulenc Rorer
I’m going to try a new semi-regular feature, which is to provide summaries of some of the seminal cases on which class-action defendants frequently rely. Instead of focusing on the tactics that led to these rulings, I’ll be highlighting the most commonly-used passages, as well as some that may be wrongly overlooked.
We’ll start this…