It’s Tuesday evening; two days after my first public complaint after multiple days of Lexis/Nexis failure. As of now, Lexis/Nexis still has not explained why my laptop cannot access the Lexis/Nexis site so that I can read cases, or read my $500 per month subscriptions to two Mealey’s reports. Same stupid error message still shows up.
Interesting times, to say the least. At the end of last week, the “conservative” block of SCOTUS overruled decades of precedent by holding that a takings claim against a state or local government can be immediately pursued in federal court rather than wading/waiting through state law processes. One also wonders what this ruling means for federal court suits against federal regulatory processes. SCOTUSblog summarizes the ruling – and dissents – in a June 22, 2019 post. The introduction is as follows:
“In its long-awaited opinion in Knick v. Township of Scott, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that plaintiffs alleging that local governments have violated the takings clause may proceed directly in federal court, rather than first litigating in state court. The opinion overrules a 34-year-old precedent, Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, triggering a sharp dissent and another debate among the justices about the meaning of stare decisis. The majority opinion also rests on a reading of the takings clause—that a constitutional violation occurs at the moment property is “taken,” even if compensation is paid later—that may have consequences beyond this case.”
For several years, it’s been my experience and opinion that idiocy and failure has been rampant within the technology and management functions of Lexis/Nexis, including its “Advantage” program. A new example is shown below. It is a screen shot of the useless error message that shows up when I try to sign in from my laptop, using the proper name and password.
Like tens of millions of others, I’m very, very tired of wasting my time on dealing with failures created by miserably executed technology. Failure is not ok, for consumers and buyers. Compare https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/the-undertakers-of-silicon-valley-how-failure-became-big-business
The litigation industry continues to evolve and grow. Consider, for example, this June 19, 2019 press release by a group of firms brining opioid suits, titled: “Lawsuits Filed by Opioid Justice Team in 34 of the 48 States Reporting Babies Born Opioid-Exposed and/or Dependent.”
Note also that the press release provides yet another example of the growing numbers of claims that involve alleged harms arising in children as a result of events involving parents.
Like so many aspects of commerce, the litigation funding industry includes both positive and negative factors and some bad apples. In a June 20, 2019 post at the Drug and Device Law blog, Bexis (Jim Beck) reports on bad apples involved in the pelvic mesh litigation, in a post titled “Litigation Funder Indictment in Pelvic Mesh Litigation.”
Once upon a time, way back a decade ago, single gene testing often occurred during investigation of diseases. Those days are essentially over. Today, it’s all about multiple genes, gene expression tests, and much more. For an example, consider the numbers set out in this abstract of a June 10, 2019 paper about an investigation into Alzheimer’s and genetic variants:
“Design, Setting, and Participants The discovery stage included 10 441 non-Hispanic white participants in the Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project. Replication was sought in 2 independent, whole-exome sequencing data sets (1766 patients with AD, 2906 without AD [controls]) and a chip-based genotype imputation data set (8728 patients with AD, 9808 controls). Bioinformatics and functional analyses were conducted using clinical, cognitive, neuropathologic, whole-exome sequencing, and gene expression data obtained from a longitudinal cohort sample including 402 patients with AD and 647 controls. Data were analyzed between March 2017 and September 2018.”
Ma Y, Jun GR, Zhang X, et al. Analysis of Whole-Exome Sequencing Data for Alzheimer Disease Stratified by APOE Genotype. JAMA Neurol. Published online June 10, 2019. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.1456
Mass tort claiming continues to drive numerous chapter 11 cases. The latest addition to the list is Insys filing due to opioid claims. Some of the prior posturing by the company is reviewed and linked in this June 10, 2019 article at BioSpace.
The litigation industry is global. The latest example is the start of RoundUp/glyphosate litigation in Australia, as described in this June 3, 2019 article in the Brisbane Times.
Questions of law and fact continue to evolved regarding post-merger claims of privilege between buyer and seller. A May 29, 2019 Delaware chancery opinion addresses the fact pattern in which the agreement included language preserving the privilege for seller but the seller failed to incur the time and effort needed to actually segregate the privileged materials. See Shareholder Rep. Services LLC v. RSI Holdco, LLC et al., C.A. No. 2018-0517-KSJM (Del. Ch. May 29, 2019). The claim of privilege was sustained as a matter of contract law, despite the more than arguable waiver due to failure to keep the information confidential.
Summaries from law firms are here, here and here. The opinion is online here.
Constitutional law continues to ripple through mass tort issues, and so a new database may be helpful for mass tort lawyers (and others). It’s a compilation of all cases in which SCOTUS reviewed an act of Congress. It’s online here. The interesting image below is from the database.
“The preferred citation for the use of the dataset is Keith E. Whittington, The Judicial Review of Congress Database (May 2019) (available at https://scholar.princeton.edu/kewhitt/judicial-review-congress-database).”
