Post-Pandemic Rise in High-Dollar Verdicts Shows Signs of Sticking: The Morning Minute
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January 29, 2024 at 06:00 AM
4 minute read
Litigation
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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
POST-PANDEMIC RECOVERY - The post-pandemic uptick in high-dollar plaintiff wins seems to be sticking around. For the third year in a row, court data shows, Philadelphia juries were about twice as likely to award verdicts of $1 million or higher than they were in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's an interesting time," Sharon Caffrey, co-chair of Duane Morris' trial practice group, told Law.com's Aleeza Furman. She added that the rise in eight-plus-digit verdicts, in particular, has caused "a lot of concern" among practitioners in the defense bar. And 2023 was an especially big year for attention-grabbing verdicts, with the highest including a $976 million award against Mitsubishi and a record-breaking $182.7 million award against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, 2023 saw the most $10 million-or-higher verdicts of the last seven years.
WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE - About 50 lawsuits alleging drug manufacturers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly failed to warn that Mounjaro, Ozempic and other drugs called "glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, receptor agonists" caused gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis, which can lead to nausea, vomiting and hospitalizations. As Law.com's Amanda Bronstad reports, lawyers are predicting 10,000 to 20,000 lawsuits over the medications, primarily focused on three Novo Nordisk medications: Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy. Some also have sued Eli Lilly over its Trulicity and Mounjaro medications. "This case is very strong right now, and we'll only see it getting stronger in the coming months as we see more data about the benefit becoming less," Parvin Aminolroaya, a partner at Seeger Weiss in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, said at the conference. At the heart of the litigation is the marketing behind the medications, which have gone viral on social media and have been featured in catchy TV commercials.
ON THE RADAR - Warburg Pincus and TA Associates have agreed to sell Procare Software, an early childhood education center cloud-based software provider, to Roper Technologies for approximately $1.86 billion. The transaction, announced Jan. 25, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024. Sarasota, Florida-based Roper Technologies was advised by a Jones Day team led by partner William Zawrotny. Warburg Pincus, which is based in New York, was represented by Kirkland & Ellis. The Kirkland & Ellis team was led by corporate partners Keri Schick Norton and Jai Agrawal. Stay up on the latest state and federal litigation, as well as the latest corporate deals, with Law.com Radar.
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