What's New in the Courts

Seventh Circuit Rejects Untimely Intervention of Sophisticated Classmember Despite Tolling under American Pipe. “A motion to intervene in order to appeal the termination of a class action is not governed by the statute of limitations applicable to the original suit. We do not read United Airlines as establishing an inflexible rule that a motion to intervene in a class action to appeal an earlier order in that action is always timely. A district judge has discretion in deciding whether a moti...

Third Circuit Allows Employee to Maintain Equitable Estoppel Action for Restitution of Promised Benefits under Section 502(a)(3). Plaintiff was asked to permanently transfer from Consol to DuPont, which had merged. Plaintiff was concerned that his salary would decrease, but believed that DuPont's more generous pension plan would offset the lower salary. Pell's DuPont manager and supervisor both assured him that his Consol service time would be counted under the DuPont pension plan. Similar re...

New England Journal of Medicine Speaks Out Against Preemption. “Drug and device companies have chosen an inauspicious moment to attack the right of patients to seek redress. A series of pivotal reports on patient safety from the Institute of Medicine, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals, has put the issue of patient safety in the national spotlight. Although frivolous lawsuits should not be condoned, product-liability litigation has unquestionably helped to remove unsafe produc...

Court Holds that E-Mails Converted to .pdf, Printed, and Produced in Paper Format Fails to Comply with Amended Rule 34. "Plaintiff disagrees that Defendants have produced the emails and attachments in a reasonable usable form. She argues that without electronic and native copies of the paper documents produced by Defendants, which documents are all connected to events leading up to, and following Plaintiff's termination, she is unable to confirm or contradict that the documents were prep...