A flurry of orders have issued from the chambers of the Hon. Joseph R. Goodwin, the United States District Judge presiding over the pelvic mesh MDLs in the Southern District of West Virginia, Charleston Division. The Court vacated and reset a bellwether trial set for December 4, 2014 to March 2, 2015, in Bellew v. Ethicon, Inc., et al., 2:13-cv-22473. The December status conference in the Coloplast MDL was vacated. A “miniwave” of cases was designated in the C.R. Bard MDL. In-person meetings and conferences in all of the pelvic mesh MDLs in SDWV were set for January 29 and 30, 2015.
The order setting the status conference on January 29, 2015 requires the presence of defendant client representative(s), in-house counsel, settlement counsel, and lead counsel, each with full authority to make all decisions related to the MDLs, at the status conference, set for the morning. The Court set a private conference with the same counsel and representatives for the afternoon of January 29, 2015.
The January 30, 2015 conferences will include “breakout sessions in the MDLs with plaintiff’s counsel for each MDL, defendant client representatives, and in-house counsel with full authority to make decisions related to the MDLs.
That sounds like a mammoth settlement conference to me! We await more information with bated breath.
Meanwhile, contentious discovery continues, particularly in the C.R. Bard MDL.
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