Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / Roundup Heads to the Supreme Court + A Rare Wave of Mass Tort Trials

Transcript

Roundup Heads to the Supreme Court + A Rare Wave of Mass Tort Trials · The Jon and Marc Podcast

• 0:09
  Welcome back to this week's episode of Tor Talk.
• 0:12
  It is John and Mark here with Joe Fantini.
• 0:14
  It might be cooling down outside, but the world of mass
• 0:18
  sorts is heating up. We have a lot of updates to
• 0:20
  bring you today and we have a very, very big update going on
• 0:24
  in Roundup. But John, do you want to get
• 0:26
  into it? Thanks for joining us, Joe.
• 0:28
  We had a big announcement last week.
• 0:30
  We've been waiting for months. Finally have a ruling from the
• 0:32
  Supreme Court about the Roundup preemption appeal.
• 0:36
  What did the court decide and what should we expect moving
• 0:38
  forward? Like you mentioned, John, we
• 0:40
  just heard from the Supreme Court late last week and they
• 0:43
  decided to take up the Roundup preemption appeal.
• 0:47
  Basically, we had a split between some of the courts on
• 0:50
  whether or not state failure to warn claims were preempted.
• 0:54
  Basically, what this means is Baron, Monsanto were arguing
• 0:58
  they weren't able to update the label to add allegations that it
• 1:02
  could potentially cause cancer because the label had already
• 1:06
  been improved. We saw this previously and we
• 1:08
  run into it in every drug case where they're alleging the FDA
• 1:13
  approved the label. So now that we know the case is
• 1:15
  going up to the Supreme Court, it's going to be argued and
• 1:18
  we're going to have a decision before the end of the term this
• 1:21
  summer. So before the end of June, we'll
• 1:23
  have a decision from the court and then the cases are all still
• 1:27
  going forward. I know you had Seth before.
• 1:29
  Even if we end up losing on this failure to warrant claim, the
• 1:32
  cases still go on. We still have the negligence, we
• 1:35
  have the design defect, breach of warranty.
• 1:38
  We have lots of claims that survive.
• 1:40
  But this is definitely a win for Bear Monsanto, something they've
• 1:44
  been trying to get for more than five years, and they finally got
• 1:47
  it. It's definitely not a positive
• 1:48
  sign for plaintiffs, but this isn't a catastrophic decision by
• 1:52
  any sense of the word. So good that we're making
• 1:54
  progress though, and we should have some more progress
• 1:57
  throughout this year. That being said, instead, we're
• 1:59
  currently in the midst of an onslaught of trials.
• 2:02
  So rarely do we have multiple mass court trials ongoing at the
• 2:05
  same time, but we do have that right now.
• 2:08
  Let's go into each of these individual trials and you can
• 2:10
  give the audience updates on what's going on, starting with
• 2:13
  the Uber Sex Abuse MDL. Right.
• 2:15
  So the Uber MDL trial, this is going on in federal court in
• 2:19
  Arizona. We're about a week into the
• 2:21
  trial. As you remember, in the first
• 2:23
  trial, it was on the state court level.
• 2:26
  We ended up losing this case. We have really good facts, a
• 2:30
  really sympathetic plaintiff. We learned a little bit from
• 2:33
  that first trial where the jury said that Uber was negligent,
• 2:37
  but their negligence didn't cause the injury to the
• 2:40
  plaintiff. So here we're really focusing on
• 2:43
  what did Uber know? What did it do with all these
• 2:45
  reports of the abuse or the assault and that the evidence is
• 2:49
  out there that almost every 8 minutes there's an allegations
• 2:53
  of abuse with an Uber rider. So we're really helpful in this
• 2:57
  trial should have a very sometime around the end of
• 3:00
  January, yeah. And we're also hearing that lift
• 3:02
  cases may get consolidated as well.
• 3:05
  There's a path to an MDL for those that should be deciding
• 3:07
  coming up here shortly. Yep, that's true.
• 3:10
  So a lot of action in the rideshare litigation front.
• 3:13
  Another one, talcum powder. We have a trial starting the
• 3:17
  Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas against J&J.
• 3:20
  What's going on there? Yeah, So A.
• 3:21
  Court case, a trial going on in my hometown here in
• 3:24
  Philadelphia. A great verdict, a great venue
• 3:27
  rather for the plaintiff. We're hoping for a great
• 3:30
  verdict, but this is how we sometimes have state
• 3:33
  consolidated actions ongoing while there's an MDL.
• 3:37
  So the focus is on the MDL with 65,000 cases pending.
• 3:42
  We heard about a verdict out of California State court and now
• 3:45
  here we are in Philly state court as well.
• 3:48
  This is an ovarian cancer case. So we're going to be paying
• 3:51
  attention to this. The trial is going to be very
• 3:53
  signs heavy. Looks like we'll end up having
• 3:56
  about a month long trial here. The jury selections just
• 3:59
  starting, so we'll keep you guys updated as we move forward.
• 4:02
  But this is a very good venue for the plaintiffs.
• 4:05
  It's a strong case. We're hoping we can get another
• 4:08
  win here and put some more pressure on J&J.
• 4:11
  Is there a follow up MDL hearing coming up for talcum powder
• 4:16
  that's going to be able to respond to what goes on in this
• 4:19
  Philadelphia trial? Yeah.
• 4:21
  So the next thing we're waiting for in MDL is to have an MDL
• 4:24
  trial. You know, even though there's
• 4:26
  different standards and different laws, each of the
• 4:29
  courts are kind of moving at different speeds.
• 4:32
  So what we want to do is plaintiffs is get as many trials
• 4:35
  as possible. So Philly, Cali, the MDL even in
• 4:39
  New Jersey State court to apply the pressure.
• 4:42
  This ruling in the Philadelphia corridor, California really
• 4:46
  doesn't have any binding effect on the MDL, but it definitely
• 4:49
  applies the pressure because we're dealing with the same
• 4:52
  parties. The first Bellwether trial kicks
• 4:54
  off this week in a litigation that really has been ongoing for
• 4:57
  a long, long time. What should we expect from this
• 5:00
  upcoming trial? Like you mentioned, John, this
• 5:02
  MDL has been around since 2020, so we're almost six years into
• 5:06
  it. We're out in the Northern
• 5:08
  District of Georgia. We have about 3500 cases
• 5:12
  pending. We haven't talked a lot about
• 5:14
  this litigation, but Paragard IUD is a form of birth control.
• 5:18
  It's AT shaped IUD that's implanted.
• 5:21
  And basically the allegations are that the T breaks off and
• 5:25
  then it comes implanted or embedded in the plaintiffs
• 5:28
  needing surgical removal. So we've had some similar cases
• 5:32
  in the past, Marina IUD, very similar design.
• 5:36
  Those cases weren't as successful as we hoped, but now
• 5:39
  we're finally in front of the jury.
• 5:40
  We had the first trial kicking off in January, the next trial
• 5:44
  scheduled for March, and then a third one in May.
• 5:46
  So we love to see the trials stacked like that to keep the
• 5:49
  pressure on the defendants and hopefully get this case resolved
• 5:52
  before the end of the year. Man, that's a big update.
• 5:55
  We haven't spoke about Paragard I don't think at all yet on tort
• 5:59
  talks. Yeah, We haven't talked much
• 6:01
  about it. Not a ton of activity there with
• 6:03
  the number of cases, like I said, just above 3500 right now,
• 6:07
  but definitely an important case.
• 6:09
  A lot of us who worked on Marina before are familiar with it as
• 6:13
  well. Moving on to the next next
• 6:14
  trial, social media. Looking ahead, we have jury
• 6:17
  selection scheduled to begin next week in this widely watched
• 6:22
  trial. What are you looking for here,
• 6:23
  Joe? Like you mentioned, everybody's
• 6:25
  talking about this trial. There's reports that Zuckerberg
• 6:28
  himself going to be coming in and testifying.
• 6:30
  Just think about the spectacle surrounding that.
• 6:33
  What we're doing now and what we're seeing is there's
• 6:35
  arguments about what evidence can be presented, what
• 6:38
  information are the parties able to look into about the jurors.
• 6:42
  Some plaintiffs, we have concerns about the information
• 6:45
  in the background that Facebook or Google, their research
• 6:49
  they're going to do on the potential jurors right there
• 6:51
  because they'll have all that information on their hands and
• 6:55
  we won't. But we're going through the
• 6:57
  standard pretrial process, arguing some motions could be
• 7:01
  and probably will be the trial of the year.
• 7:03
  It's going to set the tone for not only the social media
• 7:06
  addiction, it's going to be the road map for the video game
• 7:09
  addiction, the online gambling. It's huge.
• 7:12
  So all eyes will definitely be on this case.
• 7:14
  What venue is this going to be happening in?
• 7:16
  This is going to be in California, so we have the MDL
• 7:20
  and the state court action both venued out in California.
• 7:24
  And this is in the MDL? Yep, we also saw a positive sign
• 7:29
  last week as Character AI wound up settling a handful of cases
• 7:35
  and Character AI was a defendant alongside Google.
• 7:38
  What could this mean for the social media addiction
• 7:40
  litigation? Yeah, like you mentioned, I
• 7:42
  think the key take away was it's the similar type of allegations
• 7:46
  that we see in social media and video game addiction.
• 7:49
  Really interesting tidbit was that Google was also a name
• 7:53
  defendant so they had a consent to settle and likely had to
• 7:56
  contribute some sort of funds towards the settlement because
• 7:59
  you usually don't see defendants getting out for nothing.
• 8:02
  It wasn't an MDL, it hadn't got along that far.
• 8:05
  But similar allegations that they didn't do enough to put
• 8:09
  their rail guards in place to protect the minors.
• 8:12
  They knew about these problems and didn't do anything about it.
• 8:15
  It LED these minors to having mental health issues.
• 8:18
  There were some allegations that they form these weird
• 8:21
  relationships with the AI and that caused all types of
• 8:25
  problems. So positive development that the
• 8:27
  case settled. We'll keep an eye if there's
• 8:30
  similar cases coming up. But like Mark mentioned, the
• 8:33
  trial of the year really is going to be that social media
• 8:36
  addiction case and everybody's buzzing about that case.
• 8:40
  Next week's edition of Tor Talk, we're going to be recording live
• 8:43
  at National Trial Lawyers Summit in Miami.
• 8:46
  Joe will be there alongside Mark and myself.
• 8:49
  If you want to come and meet with us, please feel free reach
• 8:52
  out. We'll be there all day Monday
• 8:53
  and Tuesday recording and we very much look forward to seeing
• 8:56
  our guests there talk with us in person about what's going on in
• 8:59
  the legal marketing space and, and you answer any questions
• 9:02
  that you may have, whether it be about Tortalk, mass torts or
• 9:05
  podcasts or any legal growth marketing.
• 9:08
  So please make sure you subscribe to our channel and get
• 9:11
  updates every week on the best 10 minutes in mass torts here on
• 9:14
  Tortalk. Thanks again for joining us,
• 9:15
  Joe.