Johnson & Johnson has moved to disqualify plaintiffs’ legal professional Andy Birchfield and his agency, Beasley Allen, from the talcum powder multidistrict litigation, citing a brand new partnership he fashioned with one among its former legal professionals.
Birchfield and his agency have struck an alliance with James Conlan, a former accomplice at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath who labored on Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder litigation earlier than organising his personal enterprise enterprise final 12 months known as Legacy Legal responsibility Options LLC. Their partnership, highlighted in a Nov. 2 Bloomberg Law article by Conlan titled “Time to Ditch the Texas Two-Step for a New Mass Tort Technique,” seeks to strike a $19 billion deal to resolve talc lawsuits introduced by ovarian most cancers victims towards Johnson & Johnson. Conlan outlined the main points of the proposal in a Nov. 9 letter to Johnson & Johnson’s board of administrators, in keeping with a letter hooked up to a movement Johnson & Johnson filed on Tuesday to point out trigger why Birchfield and his agency shouldn’t be disqualified from the talc litigation or, in any case, faraway from the plaintiffs’ steering committee, the place Beasley Allen principal Leigh O’Dell serves as co-lead counsel.
