Susan Barfield (00:06):
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Tort Talk Thursday here with Joe Fantini of Rosen Injury Lawyers. Joe, it’s great to be spending a little bit of time with you this week talking all things mass tort.
Joe Fantini (00:17):
Thanks for having me, Susan. Always love getting together with you.
Susan Barfield (00:20):
Yeah. Well, before we dive in, I wanted to thank today’s sponsor of Tort Talk Thursday and today’s sponsor is Jurist. Jurist enhances the contact centers of modern law firms with voice-based AI agents that sound just like humans. They support a wide range of use cases, both for intake but also after retainer signed and they stand out because their sole focus is the legal industry and that allows them to have many integrations with most of the law firms CRMs. Um, their compliance first approach makes them the safe choice to support your firm’s AI journey. So if you wanna learn a little bit more about what Juris does and some of the services that they offer, you can reach out to juris@getjuris.ai to learn more. Well, Joe, today we’re gonna kind of shake things up a little bit. I am interested to learn a little bit more about your top mass tort power ranking. So let’s talk about your top five favorite mass torts. Why don’t you start off, um, with a couple of your top favorites?
Joe Fantini (01:19):
Yeah, so this is a good topic to get into something I know you and I talk about a lot, but these are the hottest and the mass torts I’m most involved with and I recommend others to get involved with right now. So number one on the list is gonna be Roundup. I like this litigation because it’s really mature. We’ve gotten past expert discovery in Dalbert in pretty much every court we’ve been in. The defendants have settled for over $11 billion and the cases are going towards trial. We had a defense verdict unfortunately last week in Philadelphia. That was the third defense verdict, but we also had four plaintiff verdicts in Philadelphia totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. So this is a really mature tort. We know what the injuries are, the experts have kind of proven it up and there’s a lot of trial scheduled. So that’s the reason why I’m really into Roundup and I’m gonna remain into Roundup going into 2025.
Susan Barfield (02:13):
Fantastic. We, as you mentioned, we talk about this a lot. I know another one of your top favorites is AFFF What? Why is that at the top of the list?
Joe Fantini (02:22):
Yeah, AFFF PFAS Litigation, another reason why I like this is it’s pretty mature. So it’s not a new tort, it’s been around for years and in this litigation we know that the defendants wanna resolve the cases because they’ve already settled the class action cases with the water contamination for the water providers for over $13 billion. So we have 3M other very large defendants. We know what the injuries are, we know where the injured plaintiffs are, and this litigation’s really far along. Now we’re in the process of serving expert reports and we have a trial scheduled for next year. So we know the injuries, we know the defendants can pay and these are severe injuries with cancer. So that’s another reason why I like AF PAS litigation coming in number two on my power rankings.
Susan Barfield (03:08):
Speaking of cancer as injuries, I know another tort your uh, is at the top of the list is hair relaxer. So tell us a little bit about your reasons why that’s one of your favorites.
Joe Fantini (03:17):
So hair relaxer isn’t as far along as some of the other litigations. We haven’t completed regular discovery and served expert reports yet, but there’s a lot of support out there in the literature and the science behind these cases focusing on uterine ovarian and endometrial cancer. Basically what’s going on is we have almost 10,000 cases pending in the MDL. We actually do have a trial date. It’s not gonna be for at least a year, but it shows these litigations are going forward. So this is the top case that I have where we haven’t served expert discovery. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to still get involved and help some very needing clients in this litigation.
Susan Barfield (03:56):
And I know both Depo Provera, I know you’re excited about that one and wanted you to mention a little bit on on Paraquat.
Joe Fantini (04:03):
Yeah, so two different stages in the litigations with that Paraquat, we had a bad ruling in the MDL earlier this year where our experts got excluded, but in Philadelphia here we have almost a dozen cases pending. We’ve served expert reports. We’re getting ready for the first trial in April, 2025. So it’s a little bit more risky ’cause we don’t know what’s gonna ultimately happen with the expert decision there. But m bullish on that one. The other one you mentioned, the new kid on the block, Depro Provera, everybody’s really excited about this litigation, this mass tort severe injuries plaintiffs need more help. There should be a lot of potential cases out there. It’s just getting underway so there’s a little more risk than some of the more mature ones we talked about. But at that of the day, we’re expecting more than 10,000 cases and again, the science appears really strong and beyond our side. So those are the top five mass torts I’m interested in, in getting involved with right now.
Susan Barfield (04:59):
Joe, there was one theme that I heard throughout these five and I’m just wondering if that’s how it makes, uh, the litigation makes it to your mass tort power rankings and that was Philadelphia . Is that one of the reasons that some of these litigations make it on your top five list?
Joe Fantini (05:14):
That’s definitely a factor, you know, where it’s been at. But any case here in my hometown, sure. We have wonderful jury pool here in Philadelphia I’ve heard, and so it’s a great mass court department. Any case in Philadelphia is something I’m usually involved with.
Susan Barfield (05:27):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Joe, as always, uh, grateful for you to take a little bit of time, um, to visit with me and to share with the industry the latest and greatest as it relates to mass tort industry, and I’m sure you will share the same sentiment we wish and hope everyone a happy holiday, um, for next week.
Joe Fantini (05:43):
Yep, certainly Susan. Thanks for having me. Thanks everybody for watching.
Susan Barfield (05:48):
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