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Mealey's Personal Injury

  • March 07, 2025

    10th Circuit Finds Expert Did Not Support Causation; Summary Judgment Affirmed

    DENVER — A representative of an estate’s named experts in a suit against a skilled nursing facility failed to show that the facility’s actions caused one of its residents to fall, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held, affirming a district court’s summary judgment award and ruling that the court did not err in failing to hold a hearing to consider the experts’ admissibility under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc.

  • March 06, 2025

    Magistrate Judge: Experts Can Opine On Employability, Lost Income After Fall

    MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee federal magistrate judge largely denied two motions to exclude expert testimony presented on behalf of a man who says he is unable to work after falling at a restaurant after finding that experts meet the admissibility standards set in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Federal Rule of Evidence 702.

  • March 06, 2025

    COVID-19 Countermeasure Causation Standards Are Not Final Agency Action, HHS Says

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government on March 5 moved to dismiss a lawsuit brought by more than 200 individuals whose family members were treated during the COVID-19 pandemic with and allegedly died as a direct result of certain countermeasures such as hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and alleged that the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was applying an incorrect standard for eligibility and to date had found no one eligible for the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Program (CICP) benefits.

  • March 05, 2025

    Treating Doctors Survive Motions To Exclude In Car Crash Injury Dispute

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The treating physicians of a man who alleges that he was injured in a car accident may testify on his treatment, prognosis and future treatment, a New Mexico federal magistrate judge ruled in denying two motions to exclude their testimony.

  • March 04, 2025

    Jury Returns Verdict For American Honda In Asbestos Brakes Case

    SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A Los Angeles jury found that an automaker’s brake products failed to perform as an ordinary customer would expect and that it failed to adequately warn about the dangers but that the conduct was not a substantial factor in a man’s development of mesothelioma.

  • March 03, 2025

    Panel Affirms $6M Verdict For Dead Smoker’s Kids, Rejects ‘Forgery’ Theory

    MIAMI — The Florida Third District Court of Appeal affirmed a $6 million verdict in favor of a dead smoker’s children against a tobacco company, finding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting evidence regarding the smoker’s diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that was contested by the smoker’s own physician.

  • February 28, 2025

    Iowa High Court: Psych Tests May Be Disclosed Only To Licensed Psychologists

    DES MOINES, Iowa — A trial court erred in granting an insurance company’s motion to compel production of a plaintiff’s psychological test materials in a dispute over uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM) benefits, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled, finding that state law unambiguously holds that discovery of such materials may be made only from one licensed psychologist to another.

  • February 26, 2025

    Sig Sauer Wants En Banc Rehearing On Experts Ruling In Pistol Design Defect Case

    CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that expert testimony on causation is not needed in a complex design defect case “misapprehended Kentucky law,” a gun manufacturer argues in a Feb. 25 petition for an en banc rehearing of a recent split decision that found that while a district court properly excluded expert testimony on causation, it erred in excluding design defect testimony and reversed an award of summary judgment.

  • February 25, 2025

    Show Cause Order Issued For Auto Accident Settlement Involving Inactive Insurer

    POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — A New York state justice issued a show cause order regarding a petition for court approval of a settlement for injuries sustained by a child of an insured in an auto accident, for which a $30,000 settlement offer was made by the insurer pursuant to an underinsurance claim.

  • February 25, 2025

    Experts Featured In Mealey's Daubert Report

    Entries are ordered in alphabetical order of the expert in each area of expert testimony.  Experts appeared in the January and February 2025 issues of Mealey’s Daubert Report.

  • February 25, 2025

    Exclusion Of Expert Was Too Harsh Of A Sanction, Tennessee Appeals Court Says

    JACKSON, Tenn. — A Tennessee trial court failed to show that a woman’s violation of a discovery order “was contumacious, intentional, blatant, or otherwise so egregious as to justify the harshest sanction available, i.e., exclusion of [her] expert and dismissal of her lawsuit,” a state appeals court held, reversing the exclusion of the witness and award of summary judgment.

  • February 21, 2025

    4th Circuit Finds Pro Se Plaintiff Was Wrongly Denied Post-Stay Discovery

    RICHMOND, Va. — A trial court abused its discretion in denying a plaintiff’s request for discovery as untimely in a negligence suit against the United States, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, holding that even if a second request served after the lifting of a discovery stay was untimely, a pre-stay request was not.

  • February 21, 2025

    Law Firms File 3 Identical Silicosis Cases Against Makers Of Quartz Countertops

    LOS ANGELES — A group of law firms has filed three identical lawsuits in state court against the makers of artificial stone products on behalf of workers who claim that they have developed silicosis from cutting and fabricating the products in question.  In one case, which is indicative of all of the actions, Roberto Cruz Rivera contends that the defendants fraudulently concealed the toxic hazards of the stone products and hid the fact that inhaling silica causes lung disease.

  • February 21, 2025

    Experts Properly Admitted To Testify On Cause Of Man’s Death, Opine On Prevention

    MIAMI — There was no error in a lower court allowing experts to testify for the estate of a man who died from carbon monoxide poisoning, a Florida appellate court ruled, affirming a verdict against the company that rented the man equipment that he used to strip hardwood floors in an enclosed space.

  • February 18, 2025

    Survivors Appeal Qualified Immunity Ruling In COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths Case

    CAMDEN, N.J. — The survivors of former nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 filed a notice of appeal to the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals seeking review of a decision by a New Jersey federal court that New Jersey’s governor and public health commissioner are entitled to qualified immunity in their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to nursing homes and granting the officials’ motion to dismiss.

  • February 18, 2025

    Judge Partially Excludes Experts In Injury Case But Allows Case To Move Forward

    CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge in South Carolina partially granted a motion to exclude experts in a lawsuit alleging an injury at a Target store but denied the company’s motion for summary judgment.

  • February 13, 2025

    Tepezza MDL Judge Selects First 4 Bellwether Plaintiffs To Head To Trial

    CHICAGO — The Illinois federal judge overseeing the Tepezza hearing loss multidistrict litigation has named the first four cases that will proceed as the initial bellwether cases and instructed the parties to confer to decide on the order in which the cases will be tried.

  • February 12, 2025

    Magistrate Judge Finds Alternative Design Ideas Speculative, Bars Testimony

    DALLAS — Experts retained to opine on a safer alternative design to a forklift involved in a workplace accident cannot testify, a Texas federal magistrate judge held, because the “proposed alternatives amount to speculative concepts, which is insufficient to rise to the level of an admissible expert opinion.”

  • February 11, 2025

    Recommendations Made On Experts’ Admissibility In Maritime Accident Case

    MIAMI — A federal magistrate judge in Florida recommended that a cruise ship operator’s motion to exclude expert witnesses be granted in part and that a motion to exclude the company’s medical expert be denied and a motion to exclude a rebuttal witness be granted, but he noted that some of the more persuasive arguments for exclusion were not raised by the parties.

  • February 10, 2025

    Cases Alleging Depo-Provera Caused Tumors Centralized In Fla.’s Northern District

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on Feb. 8 agreed to centralize cases alleging that a long-lasting injectable contraceptive caused women to develop intracranial meningiomas, a type of brain tumor, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

  • February 10, 2025

    Justice Partly Amends Judgment For Smoker’s Death, Denies Claim Of Extreme ‘Bias’

    SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — A Massachusetts state court justice on Feb. 7 agreed that a previously entered judgment worth more than $105 million in favor of the widower of a dead smoker should be amended to reduce the attorney fees award and recalculate the trebled damages award but otherwise maintained the judgment, which the tobacco company had in part claimed was evidence of “extreme bias.”

  • February 07, 2025

    Amicus: High Court Review Needed In Camp Lejeune Case Over Right To Jury Trial

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A bar association focused on the civil justice system has filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that it should grant a petition filed by plaintiffs who are challenging a lower court’s decision that they are not entitled to a jury trial in their case against the U.S. government related to water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and seeking reversal of an appellate court’s subsequent refusal to entertain their appeal.  The bar association argues that the denial of the plaintiffs’ right to a jury trial warrants review.

  • February 07, 2025

    Survivors Of University Student Who Died In COVID-19 Isolation Renew Contract Claims

    NEWARK, N.J. — The estate and parents of a college sophomore who died from an epileptic seizure while in COVID-19 isolation during the school year filed an amended complaint against a university on Feb. 6 alleging breach of contract and of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing after a New Jersey federal court dismissed wrongful death and negligence claims based on the statute of limitations and a fraudulent concealment claim and their original contract claims as deficiently pleaded.

  • February 07, 2025

    Smoker’s Malpractice Settlement Precludes Widow’s Wrongful Death Suit, Panel Says

    MIAMI — A Fourth District Florida Court of Appeal panel on Feb. 6 affirmed a trial court’s entry of summary judgment for a cigarette company on Engle claims brought against it by a widow for causing her husband’s lung cancer and death, which the trial court deemed precluded by the husband’s previous settlement of medical malpractice claims against his cancer doctor.

  • February 06, 2025

    Smoker’s Daughter Waived Elder Juror Exclusion Challenge, Panel Says

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The First District Florida Court of Appeal on Feb. 5 affirmed a defense verdict rejecting a wrongful death suit brought by a deceased smoker’s daughter against two tobacco companies, writing that she failed to timely raise or preserve her objection to the fact that the trial court did not summon any potential jurors over the age of 70.