Nearly two years ago, Medtronic and its outside patent litigation counsel, McDermott Will & Emery, were slammed by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch (D. Colo.) with a attorneys’ fees sanction exceeding $4 million (covered here). Recently, that decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  Interestingly, the appellate court placed emphasis in part on the inconsistency, on the one hand, of the trial … Continue reading →

Not that long ago, counsel for Medtronic stood before an Eighth Circuit appellate panel (Judges Loken, Melloy, Shepherd) to defend the judgment in its favor by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kyle, Sr. (D. Minn.), which Minnesota Litigator covered here.  That was an appeal in the multi-district products liability cases against Medtronic. On May 12 in St. Paul, plaintiffs of a different sort have another go against Medtronic and an adverse judg… Continue reading →

Were you sold a flare root injection regimen for a treasured oak or multiple oaks on your property to prevent oak wilt disease, only to have your tree die from oak wilt notwithstanding the hundreds of dollars (or more) spent on flare root injection? One label on branded propiconazole says,  “Preventive application is more effective than therapeutic treatment.”  Some companies that “administer” the flare root injections d… Continue reading →

…njection regimen for a treasured oak or multiple oaks on your property to prevent oak wilt disease, only to have your tree die from oak wilt notwithstanding the hundreds of dollars (or more) spent on flare root injection? One label on branded propiconazole says,  “Preventive application is more effective than therapeutic treatment.”  Some companies that “administer” the flare root injections do so with a guaranty or warran… Continue reading →

…rm or illness? As a first line of defense, pharmaceuticals and device manufacturers seek protection under federal regulation but there are ways for such manufacturers to game that system (by promoting, for example, “off label” uses or, theoretically, by duping federal regulators by other means (i.e., concealing or distorting data as to efficacy or side effects)). So the FDA may afford medical companies some protection, but that protec… Continue reading →

…n that would have negatively affected levofloxacin sales in both Europe and the United States.  Over the past decade, there appears to have been increased concern about these medications and the communication of risk on their labels.  The label warnings have been increasingly emphatic.  Plaintiffs’ theories seem to be, in a nutshell, that the drug companies knew of the medicine’s risks and have steadfastly tried to understate or de-em… Continue reading →

The ACLU v. TiZA First Amendment litigation has been a repeat-customer of Minnesota Litigator.  Putative add-on “intervenors” (parents of school kids and kids) were denied the right to intervene  in the action before the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota (Frank, J.) and they have now taken that denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and argued the appeal (before the appellate panel comprised of Lok… Continue reading →

The recent unpublished Minnesota Court of Appeals decision in Chamnic et al. v. Colonial Pacific Leasing is the latest installment in Tales of County Recording Office Errors (and their unfortunate (costly) ramifications) (an earlier episode is here). Kevin J. Dunlevy of Beisel & Dunlevy successfully flipped a jury verdict from Wabasha County District Court (Judge Terrence M. Walters) before an appellate panel of Judges Shumaker, Halbrooks, a… Continue reading →

…sisted.  ProEnergy (and Balkan) eventually agreed to produce some documents but not Balkan’s settlement agreement with ProEnergy. As wide and broad as discovery is in U.S. litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals held, the appellate court’s review of trial court decisions (in this case, denying Ghana access to the Balkan/ProEnergy settlement agreement) is “narrow and deferential.” Even assuming documents that indicate the dis… Continue reading →

…enrichment.  (Here is a summary of the case’s issues on appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.) One might have thought that the Minnesota Supreme Court’s having taken the discretionary appeal from the intermediate appellate court boded well for plaintiff/appellants but, at argument on January 31, it looked as if plaintiff and his proposed class of real estate agents who were compelled (more or less) to buy insurance (more or less) fro… Continue reading →