The Wall Street Journal (2/13, Burton) reports, “A federal judge who early last month threw out massive litigation against Medtronic Inc. didn’t disclose that his son’s law firm has long had the medical-devicemaker as a client.” Judge Richard H. Kyle of the federal district court in Minneapolis stated that “he didn’t realize the firm, Frederickson & Byron, had represented” Medtronic “on multibillion-dollar deals.” Now, “members of the ‘steering committee’ of plaintiffs lawyers told him they plan to seek his disqualification from the litigation.” Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University School of Law, noted that “the losers may now be able to ask that the case be reinstated and sent to a new judge but only if they can meet…the ‘tough test that a Medtronic loss would have a substantially negative effect on the son’s firm.” At issue in the case was whether “federal regulation of medical devices ‘preempts,’ or precludes any such product –liability cases under state law.”
From the American Association for Justice news release.
