Calling the defense counsel’s behavior “unjustifiable,” a West Virginia federal judge has sanctioned Drinker Biddle & Reath in the Ethicon transvaginal surgical mesh multidistrict litigation for continuing to remove cases filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia despite the judge’s previous rulings that the cases belong in Pennsylvania state court.
In Wilson v. Ethicon Women’s Health and Urology, one of more than 18,000 cases assigned to U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin for the Southern District of West Virginia in the MDL, Goodwin said Drinker Biddle, as defense counsel for Ethicon, ignored his prior rulings in other cases that his court did not have federal question jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ state-court claims.
