The official statistics provided by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in recent years count Products Liability as nearly one quarter of all pending multidistrict litigations (MDLs), making it the largest category among all classifications ..read more

As we continue our battle against COVID-19, one of the successes is the speed with which pharmaceutical companies have developed vaccines. For those not familiar with the science and the process of getting new drugs to market, this was truly done at “warp speed.” Indeed, the effort and resources that went into getting these vaccines to market in under a year, in a sense, rivals the development of technologies such as nuclear energy during World War II. And don’t forget all the other new technology that was developed over the last year to diagnose COVID-19 infections and then track them, as wel ..read more

After a nearly 40-year legal career at Alston & Bird, where he was chair of the firm’s Management Committee and the Products Liability Group, , joined JAMS. Mr. Taylor focuses on mass torts, complex commercial disputes and class actions, as well as employment, personal injury, and civil rights matters ..read more

Conceptually, the goal of bellwether mediations is the same as that of its counterpart (a trial): to develop an objective way to value a disparate set of cases to facilitate settlement. As with bellwether trials, the issues of when and how are paramount to give the process the needed credibility for future settlements. Knowing how the cases are selected, who is participating, what proof is being used and when in the process the mediations are being conducted are all crucial ..read more

For many years, companies have required consumers and employees to sign contracts containing arbitration clauses that prohibit them from filing class action claims and require them to waive jury trials. The history of how this trend developed is interesting, in that it created unintended consequences that some companies are now trying to counter by no longer arbitrating consumer and employment claims ..read more