![]() One of the government’s FCPA allegations was that J&J affiliates paid bribes to Iraqi officials during the Saddam Hussein regime. government’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation. The 5th Circuit said the “most problematic evidence” involved a 2011 deferred prosecution agreement J&J entered to resolve the U.S. The appeals court rejected most of the defendants’ technical arguments but agreed a new trial was in order. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of Dallas, had already reduced the $502 million jury verdict to $151 million.ĭePuy and J&J, represented at the 5th Circuit by Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis, asked the appeals court for judgment as a matter of law on many of the plaintiffs’ claims or for a new trial because jury deliberations were tainted by the introduction of prejudicial evidence. As my colleague Nate Raymond wrote in a Reuters piece last night about the ruling, the judge overseeing the MDL, U.S. The case before the 5th Circuit involved a bellwether trial for five plaintiffs in multidistrict litigation over DePuy’s hip implants. In another spot, the 5th Circuit referred to plaintiffs’ lawyers as “Lanier and crew.” That’s not phraseology you will often see from a appeals court describing a team of lawyers. The 5th Circuit excoriated Lanier, who “meant simultaneously to activate the jury’s passions and to anchor their minds to a salient, inflated, and irrelevant dollar figure.” But the opinion didn’t call out by name the Lanier co-counsel who first asked jurors to calculate damages based on the plaintiffs’ time. In a footnote, for instance, the opinion discusses his side’s improper call for jurors to consider the value of the time of DePuy’s experts in comparison to the day-by-day, hour-by-hour suffering endured by plaintiffs. The 5th Circuit spares him no courtesy whatsoever. ![]() I’ll explain the details below, but I want to highlight the truly extraordinary tone of the opinion’s discussion of Lanier’s errors. ![]() Lanier had “manufactured” a “false” choice for jurors between his side’s unpaid experts and the other side’s hired guns, the 5th Circuit said. But Lanier’s witnesses, in fact, had either received or expected to receive compensation. Lanier told jurors several times that two key medical witnesses for his side were unpaid, drawing a contrast with DePuy’s expert witnesses. But that’s not all the famed trial lawyer did wrong, according to Judge Smith’s outrage-fueled opinion. The appeals court said those violations, on their own, would have warranted a new trial. Lanier ran afoul of the Rules of Civil Procedure at least twice in his closing arguments, the 5th Circuit said. The 5th Circuit panel – Judges Jerry Smith, Rhesa Barksdale and Stephen Higginson – reamed Lanier repeatedly and by name, accusing him of inflammatory tactics and outright deception. DePuy Orthopaedics, ordering a new trial in the hip implant case. ![]() Circuit Court of Appeals issued Wednesday night in Christopher v. But I doubt even as savvy a lawyer as he could have predicted the searing decision the 5th U.S. Lanier is smart enough not to expect every astounding verdict to hold up – the Vioxx and Actos verdicts were, in fact, slashed on post-verdict motions or appeal. Trained as a pastor, he has an uncanny rapport with jurors, who have bestowed upon him enormous verdicts: $253 million against Merck in a 2005 Vioxx trial $6 billion (yes, billion) against Takeda in a 2014 trial over the diabetes drug Actos $502 million against Johnson & Johnson and DePuy in a 2016 trial over metal-on-metal hip implants. (Reuters) - Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm is one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country.
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