Joe Winebrenner
Joe Winebrenner is a product liability defense attorney who defends individual, mass tort and class action litigation matters.
Joe focuses on dispositive motion practice, including motions for summary judgment and Daubert motions to exclude expert testimony. He has also successfully defeated motions for class certification, and he has appeared at numerous trials on behalf of clients. Joe represents clients in various industries, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer and construction products.
View the full bio for Joe Winebrenner at the Faegre Drinker website.
Articles by Joe Winebrenner:
Class certification is the feature fight of any putative class action lawsuit. If granted, it can multiply the stakes of a case several hundred- or thousand-fold. If denied, it can signal the end of the litigation. Because of its importance, parties often invest heavily in the class certification fight, including by offering – and challenging – expert testimony.
As this trend has become more common, more focus has been devoted to answering a key question – to what extent should Rule 702 apply at this critical juncture? A number of circuits have held that Rule 702 applies in full force and that opinions deemed inadmissible under Rule 702 should not be considered in regard to class certification; others, such as the Ninth Circuit, have taken a somewhat different approach. Recently, the Southern District of California, in Stewart v. Quest Diagnostics Clinical Labs., Inc., 2022 WL 5236821 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 5, 2022), weighed in on this question.
Continue reading “Listen Up Class: The Role of Daubert at the Class Certification Stage in the Ninth Circuit”
The JPML held its second hearing of 2022 at the end of March. We addressed the results of the first hearing recently here, and further observed the JPML’s trend over the course of the last several years in forming fewer MDL proceedings each year. As we move further into 2022, it is clear this trend has continued.
In April, the JPML formed two new MDLs out of four total petitions, bringing the cumulative total of new MDLs in 2022 to four (out of seven petitions considered)—well below the typical quarterly pace for new MDLs, including that of 2021. Through its orders, the JPML provided insights into the circumstances that justify MDL formation, and those that do not. We briefly discuss these orders below:
Continue reading “It’s an MDL World: Agreement is enough, or is it?”
Centralization of claims in multidistrict litigation has become the new normal—so much so, that MDL proceedings now comprise more than 50 percent of the federal civil caseload. But has MDL practice in the United States peaked? Only time will tell. While the total number of MDL cases remains high (424,720 cases as of mid-February), the vast majority of these cases are concentrated in just a few of the more crowded MDL dockets. And as the annual MDL statistics in recent years show, the total number of new MDL petitions submitted, and granted, has been in decline. In 2021, for example, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation received 33 total MDL petitions, granting only 19—compared with 44 petitions (26 granted) the year before.
Continue reading “It’s an MDL World: The JPML issues its first orders of the year, creating two new MDLs”
When plaintiffs request damages for noneconomic loss such as pain and suffering, courts are split on whether a defendant can require a plaintiff to disclose during discovery how much the plaintiff intends to ask the jury to award in noneconomic damages. A recent decision from a federal district court in Minnesota, however, required the plaintiff to do just that.
In Lewis v. City of Burnsville, 2020 WL 3496990 (D. Minn. June 29, 2020), the defendants asked the plaintiff during discovery to itemize the damages that she was seeking and “produce documentary support for her damages claim.” The plaintiff declined to provide this information, arguing that it was impossible to calculate her noneconomic loss. The magistrate judge, however, ruled that the plaintiff had to disclose how much she was seeking in noneconomic damages “along with the basis for that figure,” if the plaintiff intended to ask the jury for a specific dollar amount (or range) of noneconomic damages at trial.
Continue reading “District Court Requires Plaintiff to Disclose Evidence About Noneconomic Loss”
