Commercial Litigation Update

EBG attorney William O. Stein recently obtained a complete defense verdict in one of the few jury trials to be tried during the pandemic. I recently sat down with him for a Q&A regarding his experience trying a “socially distanced” jury trial during the pandemic and how it differed from a regular jury trial.

Q: What was it like trying a “socially distanced” jury trial case during the pandemic?

Following up on our prior discussion of Studio 417, Inc., et al. v. The Cincinnati Ins. Comp., a different federal judge in the Western District of Missouri recently ruled in Zwillo V, Corp. v. Lexington Insurance Co. that a Kansas City restaurant could not recover for COVID-19 business interruption losses under an insurance policy and, in the process, questioned the reasoning of Studio 417, Inc. and other recent decisions.

The owner of a restaurant in Kansas City (the “Insured”), purchased a commercial property insurance policy from Lexington Insurance Company (the ...

Since the enactment of the Hatch-Waxman Act in 1984, courts have held that brand companies can sue generics wherever they plan on making sales, which is everywhere in the U.S. In practice, most suits have been filed in Delaware and New Jersey, with suits against multiple generic companies over the same drug consolidated in one proceeding.

In November 2020, the Federal Circuit upended this settled practice when it issued its opinion in Valeant Pharmaceuticals v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, No. 19-2402 (Fed. Cir. 2020), holding that venue is not established by contemplated future acts of ...

On October 21, 2020, President Trump signed into law the “Due Process Protections Act” (“DPPA”), P.L. No. 116-182, 134 Stat. Ann. 894, which was effective upon enactment. Receiving rare bi-partisan support in both houses of Congress, the new law seeks to bring balance to the power dynamic between the prosecution and the defense by requiring federal courts at the outset of a case to put the government on notice of its constitutional discovery obligations and the potential consequences for flouting those obligations.

By directly amending Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure ...

Richard Robinson was a truck driver who tried to sue his former employer for civil penalties pursuant to the California Private Attorney’s General Act (“PAGA”). Unfortunately for him, his employer settled another PAGA action while his case was still pending, and despite opting out of the other settlement, the Court of Appeals dismissed the case because he no longer had standing to bring his own PAGA claim once the other had settled.

Mr. Robinson worked as a truck driver for Southern Counties Oil Company. After completing the prerequisite steps for bringing a PAGA action against ...

To constitutional scholars, the line between Alexander Hamilton and the federal judiciary will always connect through The Federalist No. 78, wherein Hamilton anticipated the doctrine of judicial review by concluding that federal courts would have the “duty…to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void.”

But surely Hamilton never anticipated that two-and-half centuries later the federal judiciary he helped create and define would parody a Broadway musical about him to discuss the resumption of jury trials during a pandemic. But, alas, we ...

We have previously discussed (here and here) the complex issues surrounding the resumption of jury trials during the COVID-19 pandemic. We cautioned that the various experimental efforts to resume jury trials taking place in courts around the country were likely to meet with a host of practical and jurisprudential problems. A few weeks later, it appears that our assessment was, if anything, too optimistic. Many of the states that had been taking first steps toward resuming jury trials in some form are now shutting down those experiments because of the spike in COVID-19 cases that is ...

In what can be considered a victory for the drinking classes (see Taps & Bourbon on Terrace, LLC v. Underwriters at Lloyds London, et al.), a Philadelphia judge recently ruled that a tavern’s lawsuit for business interruption coverage for losses caused by COVID-19 will survive for another round. Taps & Bourbon on Terrace (“Taps & Bourbon”) alleged that it sustained business losses resulting from “the COVID-19 pandemic and [] state and local orders mandating that all non-essential businesses be temporarily closed.” In what has become a familiar rejoinder during this ...

In September 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) announced its annual healthcare-related “takedown.” The takedown, which involved enforcement actions that actually occurred over numerous months preceding the press event (and as such, the reference to a “takedown” is a misnomer”) targeted alleged schemes that related to opioid distribution, substance abuse treatment facilities (“sober homes”), and telehealth providers, the latter of ...

Congratulations—you’ve been sued again. This time it’s in federal court under the Lanham Act. You review the complaint, and while it’s not outrageously frivolous on its face (which we previously discussed here), it’s also not your run-of-the-mill Lanham Act case. You might assume that your only option is to fully litigate the claim, and wait for vindication from the Court on summary judgment or after trial. But the Lanham Act provides another remedy: fee-shifting to recoup your legal fees. If the Lanham Act claim you’ve defended against is “exceptional” under the ...