Susan Barfield (00:06):
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Tort Talk Thursday. As always, week over week here with Joe Fantini of Rosen Injury Lawyers. Joe, thanks so much for spending time today with me sharing all the updates and insights on mass tort.
Joe Fantini (00:20):
Thanks for having me, Susan. Always love to get together with you each week here to discuss the latest developments in the mass torts world.
Susan Barfield (00:27):
Okay, fantastic. Let’s dive right in and give us some quick hits. Let’s start off with the talc bankruptcy. What is going on there?
Joe Fantini (00:34):
Yeah, so in the talc bankruptcy, we recently got word that the trial’s gonna be scheduled either late January, beginning of February. It’s gonna remain down in Texas. Basically two of the main issues are, one, whether the bankruptcy’s permissible or whether or not j and j filed this in bad faith and it gets kicked out. Another recent development is there’s gonna be a challenge to J and J’s count on the number of potential claimants that opted in to this pre-packaged settlement. So we’re trying to get some information from J&J about how the votes were totaled and that information. So stay tuned certainly for this in the beginning of next year.
Susan Barfield (01:14):
Awesome. Next I wanna touch on is AFFF, and I know that the court entered the CMO 31. Um, give us the highlights of that.
Joe Fantini (01:22):
So in the a f litigation, we have the class action with the Wooder facilities and now also we’re focusing on the PI cases. We’re working up the bellwether cases, but as you mentioned, CMO 31 just came down. Make sure you read it. There’s a supplemental plaintiff profile form that needs to be completed. You either have anywhere from 60 to 150 days to get all of ’em completed, depending upon the size of your inventory. Make sure you submit that while that’s ongoing in the PI Avenue. Good developments in the class action. We have a fairness hearing for two class action settlements coming up on November 1st, totaling a little bit more than a billion dollars and then also just announced that carrier global agreed to settle for a little over 600 million. So that’s gonna bring the total over 13, 14 billion in the water contamination cases, which tells me they’re gonna end up paying on these PI cases as well.
Susan Barfield (02:19):
Got it. And then next, let’s hit on Paraquat. Tell us about the cases that were filed in your favorite city Philadelphia. Share a little update there.
Joe Fantini (02:28):
Yeah, so Philadelphia Court of Common please, where I used to clerk in the mass tour department. It’s the epicenter of the Paraquat litigation. It’s ongoing right now. We’re reaching close to a thousand cases filed. I think we’ll get there before the end of the year. The first trial scheduled to begin in April of 2025. It’s gonna be closely watched by everybody. We’re deep in expert discovery here. Plaintiffs are serving their reports. Defense expert reports due before the end of the year. We’ll have the all important dalbert hearing in Q, but all eyes here in Philadelphia as it always is, watching this Paraquat docket very closely.
Susan Barfield (03:05):
Yeah, exciting things for Paraquat for sure. Um, and then lastly, tell us a little bit about NEC and what’s going on there.
Joe Fantini (03:13):
NEC, we’re about a month into the third trial. This is ongoing here in Missouri State Court. Everybody knows about the two previous verdicts, $600 and $495 million respectively. While that’s ongoing, we just got some more good news in the MDL, the judge scheduled the bellwether trials. The first four cases three are scheduled to be in 2025, beginning in May, August and November. So there’s a lot of pressure coming on Abbott here. We expect a verdict in this Missouri case in the next two weeks, hoping for another good result for these very deserving plaintiffs.
Susan Barfield (03:48):
Fantastic. Sounds like lots of movement across these litigations. And Joe, as always, we really appreciate you taking time to give us these updates on the litigations. If you enjoy listening to tot talk Thursday, make sure you subscribe to our channel so you can hear week over week Joe’s updates and insights.
Joe Fantini (04:05):
Thanks for having me, Susan.
