Product Liability & Mass Torts Digest

Under both strict product liability and negligence theories, plaintiffs must establish proximate causation where there is a reasonable certainty that the defendant’s acts caused the injury. Several recent cases have emphasized the Daubert requirement that expert testimony supporting proximate cause for product liability claims must be non-speculative and backed by reliable, reproducible, scientific methodologies.

In a recent decision, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the summary judgment victory of Zeltiq Aesthetics, Inc. in a failure-to-warn and design defect lawsuit regarding its CoolSculpting medical device and found that a health care provider’s misunderstanding of an adverse effect did not bear on the adequacy of the product’s warning.