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On August 1, 2018 the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its opinion in In re Accutane Litigation, 2018 WL3636867 wherein the Court abandoned Frye’s “General Acceptance” requirement for admission ofscientific evidence under Rule 702. In doing so, it extended the gatekeeping function of the trial courtand obligated it to ensure that an expert’s testimony was both reliable and relevant before admitting itto the jury.When considering admissibility of scientific evidence the Court adopted the Daubert s

In the matter of Willner v. Vertical Reality, the New Jersey Supreme Court set limits on a plaintiff’s ability to win sanctions under the Offer of Judgment Rule in cases of multiple defendants, even when the ultimate damages award is well beyond the original judgment. The Court overturned an award of sanctions in a product liability case where a jury ordered two defendants to pay plaintiff far beyond what his attorney had demanded in a pretrial offer of judgment. The Supreme Court said it wo

Recently, in Mason v. BCK Corporation, 292 Or App 580 (2018), the court held that an injured plaintiff could not recover against a bar because the plaintiff was unable to demonstrate that he did not “substantially contribute” to the driver’s intoxication. In this case, the court considers whether the personal representative of a deceased passenger can hold the bar liable for serving the intoxicated driver if the passenger and intoxicated driver spent several hours drinking and sociali

2018 has been a pivotal year for consumer data protection, with sweeping new laws being passed to ensure increased consumer data privacy around the world. In May, Europe’s General Data Protection Law, or GDPR, took effect. In June, the California Legislature passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), a bold new digital data privacy law that is the first of its kind in the United States. The California law becomes effective on January 1, 2020, and will launch a new era of d

On August 23, 2018 the California Supreme Court issued a far-reaching decision in the case of King v. CompPartners, Inc. (S232197) which positively impacts the workers' compensation system and represents a significant victory for the utilization review industry and the physicians with whom they work. The Riverside County Superior Court sustained a demurrer, without leave to amend, on behalf of defendants, a utilization review company and a utilization review physician, to a complaint filed by an