534 results for 'cat:"Product Liability"'.
J. Holcomb denies in part Whirlpool's motion to dismiss consumers' allegations that a Whirlpool gas stove emits harmful pollutants, that Whirlpool is aware of this risk and that it has not informed consumers of the risk. The stove owners have Article III standing to bring these actions. The disclaimer, buried in the lengthy user manual, does not effectively disclaim the implied warranties at issue. The consumers sufficiently allege the existence of a design defect. The consumers are granted leave to amend their fraud claims.
Court: USDC Central District of California, Judge: Holcomb, Filed On: May 14, 2024, Case #: 2:23cv4752, NOS: Contract Product Liability - Contract, Categories: product Liability
J. Hernandez Covington grants the builder's motion to exclude certain evidence. At this point before trial, the court has held the economic loss rule applies. Evidence of damages that are precluded by the economic loss rule may not be admitted at trial. Only damages to personal property are recoverable, being that other property and damages qualify as economic damages not recoverable in product liability tort claims.
Court: USDC Middle District of Florida, Judge: Hernandez Covington, Filed On: May 14, 2024, Case #: 8:21cv2777, NOS: Property Damage Product Liability - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Construction, Damages, product Liability
J. Fallon denies a request by the widow of a shipyard worker who allegedly died from asbestos exposure, declining to dismiss the indemnity and defense claims filed by the owner of the shipyard and the manufacturer of marine interiors on sea-going vessels. However, the widow reserves the right to re-urge arguments against the shipyard and the manufacturer if two ship-owners do not successfully demonstrate they are entitled to indemnity protection.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: May 13, 2024, Case #: 2:20cv1877, NOS: Asbestos Personal Injury Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: product Liability, Indemnification, Asbestos
J. Pallmeyer grants a parent’s motion to join a number of Nevada doctors as defendants to her complaint against a baby formula manufacturer, remanding this case to the Circuit Court of Cook County. This was a bellwether case for the hundreds of lawsuits filed against the formula maker over its tainted formula, which caused infants to develop necrotizing enterocolitis. While doing discovery, the parent found out that doctors in Nevada may have been negligent in treating her own child afflicted with the condition. Though the parent wants the case sent to the Nevada state court, judicial rules make Cook County the proper remand venue, as that is where the case was first filed.
Court: USDC Northern District of Illinois, Judge: Pallmeyer, Filed On: May 13, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv2017, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Health Care, Negligence, product Liability
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Per curiam, the appellate division finds that the trial court improperly ruled in product liability and personal injury claims contending an airbag caused fatal injuries by deploying unexpectedly after the decedent's vehicle collided with a deer because evidence indicates the airbag deployed only after the decedent parked the vehicle following the collision and turned to check on the passengers, then the deer. Reversed.
Court: New York Appellate Divisions, Judge: Per curiam, Filed On: May 10, 2024, Case #: CA 22-01732 , Categories: product Liability
J. Cole denies Kroger's motion to dismiss, ruling the consumers' reliance on false representations about the type and amount of heavy metals in teething wafers when buying the product constitutes a particularized injury that gives them standing to pursue product liability claims. Although their children did not suffer any physical injuries as a result of eating the wafers, the economic injuries sustained by the parents allow the case to proceed.
Court: USDC Southern District of Ohio, Judge: Cole, Filed On: May 8, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv544, NOS: Personal Injury - Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Damages, product Liability, Class Action
J. Huntsman grants the car owners' motion for discovery sanctions based on the defendant car company's failure to appear at one deposition and failure to provide a prepared witness at another deposition in this lawsuit concerning a Hyundai vehicle and its alleged defects. The plaintiffs are entitled to expenses and attorney fees caused by the company's failure to appear, as well as the "constructive failure to adequately present a corporate representative."
Court: USDC Northern District of Oklahoma , Judge: Huntsman, Filed On: May 8, 2024, Case #: 4:23cv297, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Sanctions, product Liability, Discovery
J. Marks grants a pharmaceutical company’s motion for judgment on the pleadings on this pharmaceutical product liability lawsuit brought by a cancer patient allegation that the chemotherapy medication Taxotre resulted in her permanent hair loss. The patient claims strict products liability failure to warn, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment, and fraud and deceit. She failed to properly plead her fraud claims with particularity and filed this case outside the two-year statute of limitations.
Court: USDC Middle District of Alabama, Judge: Marks, Filed On: May 7, 2024, Case #: 3:23cv649, NOS: Personal Injury - Health Care/Pharmaceutical Personal Injury/Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Health Care, product Liability
J. Gillmor grants summary judgment to the manufacturer of a helicopter involved in a fatal helicopter crash in negligence and product liability claims. The family of a man who died in the crash cannot show that the manufacturer knowingly caused or concealed flaws that may have led to the crash. There is also no evidence that a provision of a statute, governing liability of aircraft manufacturers even after many years following delivery of the aircraft, applies. The helicopter was delivered 18 years before the crash and there is no evidence of a design defect in replacement components installed in 2018 altered the helicopter to the extent that the rolling provision applies.
Court: USDC Hawaii, Judge: Gillmor, Filed On: May 6, 2024, Case #: 1:21cv193, NOS: Airplane - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: product Liability, Wrongful Death, Aviation
J. Wilder-Doomes grants a request by an insurer of a 28-acre mixed-housing development, compelling a chemical manufacturer of a termiticide and mold spray to produce documentation related to its purchase of a product that it repackaged as “Mold-Care.” The manufacturer failed to satisfy its burden that it could properly withhold production of its “Master Repack Agreement” as confidential business information. The manufacturer is ordered to produce unredacted copies of the agreement to the insurer for its state-law product liability lawsuit against the Tennessee-based chemical company.
Court: USDC Middle District of Louisiana, Judge: Wilder-Doomes, Filed On: May 3, 2024, Case #: 3:21cv431, NOS: Property Damage Product Liability - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Property, product Liability
J. Bell grants a group of medical product makers’ partial motion to dismiss product liability allegations after a spinal surgery patient developed tuberculosis following her operation. The patient claims that the group’s sale of “FiberCel” to the hospital where she had her surgery done is not covered under the North Carolina Blood and Tissue Shield Statute. She incorrectly argues the group’s sale of FiberCel, as a processed-tissue product, is not covered under the statute because it is not specifically blood, a blood product or human tissue, but a “tissue-based product.” Although FiberCel was recalled two months after the patient’s surgery for also resulting in tuberculosis in other patients, the product is shielded by the statute because its language includes any person or institution involved in the “processing” of human tissue.
Court: USDC Western District of North Carolina, Judge: Bell, Filed On: May 3, 2024, Case #: 5:21cv172, NOS: Personal Injury - Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Government, Health Care, product Liability
J. Hill finds a lower court improperly granted summary judgment to Bass Pro on a consumer's product defect claims concerning the purchase of a Beretta APX 9mm pistol for self- protection, which was stored under the driver's seat of his vehicle with a user manual. Bass Pro argued that is was not liable when the consumer misused the firearm in close proximity to his football teammate, after boasting that he could disassemble the weapon in "2.2 seconds," which resulted in an accidental gun shot that left the teammate with a leg amputation. However, the consumer sufficiently showed that he did not commit a "volitional" act based on his belief that the weapon would not fire when he removed the magazine to disarm it. Reversed.
Court: Kansas Courts Of Appeal, Judge: Hill, Filed On: May 3, 2024, Case #: 126314, Categories: Negligence, product Liability
J. Flynn finds the Court of Appeals properly reversed the trial court’s judgment excluding hospitals from drug liability. “A hospital that supplies and administers a dangerously defective drug in conjunction with providing a healthcare service can be a ‘seller’ that is ‘engaged in the business of selling’ for purposes of liability.” Affirmed.
Court: Oregon Supreme Court, Judge: Flynn, Filed On: May 2, 2024, Case #: S070082, Categories: Health Care, product Liability
J. Flanagan grants a generator production company’s partial dismissal in this product liability class action brought by an ice cream truck driver who was chemically burned when the truck’s gasoline tank malfunctioned. The driver argues the company knew the tanks were faulty, claiming fraud by omission. Because the driver fails to give sufficient information as to when the company supposedly began hiding this information, and because he does not point to any specific way that the company tried to hide information, this part of his claim fails.
Court: USDC Eastern District of North Carolina, Judge: Flanagan, Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 7:23cv1329, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Fraud, product Liability, Contract
J. Vance grants the unopposed request for summary judgment to a Toyota manufacturer and a sales company, dismissing product liability claims by the driver of a 2014 Lexus ES350 who alleges injuries from the car’s airbag failure to deploy when he crashed into a guard rail. The Toyota companies presented certified medical records taken at the hospital where the litigant was treated after the accident, in which the treating physician stated that he reportedly “drank a significant amount of alcohol and then crashed his car on purpose [in] an attempt to end his life secondary to depression and suicidal thoughts after a break-up 5 months ago.” Furthermore, the litigant has failed to present evidence sufficient to establish the essential elements of his defective airbag claims.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Vance, Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 2:22cv4607, NOS: Personal Injury - Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Evidence, Vehicle, product Liability
J. Chung remands a dispute between a group of former teachers and a chemical manufacture in which the teachers claim they were subjected to health risks due to being exposed to the manufacture's chemicals found in fluorescent light
ballast capacitors. A jury found the manufacture liable and awarded the teachers $185 million in damages. But the lower court incorrectly applied Missouri law regarding the statute of repose and damages, when it should have applied Washington's Product Liability Act, which has no statute on repose. Further proceedings are needed as a result. Reversed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Chung , Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 83287-5-I, Categories: product Liability, Choice Of Law
J. Dimke declines to dismiss the customer's complaint alleging that the vape supplies company manufactured a cigarette battery that spontaneously exploded in his pocket and injured him. The company argues that the complaint is time-barred due to the three-year statute of limitations starting from when he discovered his injury. However, it took the customer a significant amount of time to uncover the previously unknown identity of the company and even the smoke shop that sold the defective cigarette battery admitted that it had trouble finding the identity of its supplier, hence why the customer's discovery was hindered.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Washington, Judge: Dimke, Filed On: April 30, 2024, Case #: 4:22cv5014, NOS: Personal Injury - Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: product Liability, Discovery
J. Lin grants the consumer's motion to consolidate her class action alleging that the beverage container manufacturer did not inform consumers that its popular Stanley tumbler products contained lead. The beverage container manufacturer argues that a stay or dismissal is more appropriate than consolidation, because consolidation will require conducting discovery with all named plaintiffs instead of just the top plaintiff, but this argument "strains common sense" as the beverage container manufacturer would already likely seek depositions against multiple class members in the event that the consumer's lawsuit was the only action.
Court: USDC Western District of Washington, Judge: Lin, Filed On: April 26, 2024, Case #: 2:24cv191, NOS: All Other Real Property - Real Property, Categories: Civil Procedure, product Liability, Class Action
J. Kuhar finds that the appeals court erroneously held that a products liability claim over a failed safety harness had not been resolved in a New Jersey federal court and could be tried in Utah. The New Jersey case ended in summary judgment for the manufacturer when that court ruled that consumers failed to produce an admissible expert report and testimony. The appeals court took this to mean the case had not been resolved on its merits, but a determination that the consumers failed to meet their initial burden of proof by providing necessary expert testimony is tantamount to a decision on the merits under the doctrine of issue preclusion. Reversed.
Court: Utah Supreme Court, Judge: Petersen, Filed On: April 25, 2024, Case #: 20220282, Categories: product Liability, Experts
J. Huffaker grants, in part, the medical device maker’s motion to dismiss a product liability suit filed by a patient who claims that her Smart Port, implanted for the purpose of infusion therapy was defective. She alleges claims under the Alabama Extended Manufacturer’s Liability Doctrine as well as claims for negligence, breach of warranty and wantonness concerning the device’s catheter, which fractured near her heart. The patient’s claims have an articulated reasonable set of facts that could make the medical device maker’s liable for failure to warn. Therefore, the AEMLD, negligence and wantonness claims may proceed, and the patient concedes her warranty claim.
Court: USDC Middle District of Alabama, Judge: Huffaker, Filed On: April 23, 2024, Case #: 2:24cv112, NOS: Personal Injury - Health Care/Pharmaceutical Personal Injury/Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Tort, Negligence, product Liability
J. Rakoff finds that the district court properly granted class certification in a consumer class action concerning the marketing of the pet health product Cosequin. The class expert's proposed damages model was sufficiently sound and developed to satisfy this standard at the class certification stage. Affirmed.
Court: 9th Circuit, Judge: Rakoff, Filed On: April 22, 2024, Case #: 22-55744, Categories: Damages, product Liability, Class Action