On Thursday, December 3, 2015, Reed Smith Partner Eric Alexander, Sarah Heineman, Senior Counsel at Bayer Corporation, Alan Modlinger, Counsel at Merck & Co., Inc., and Sean Fahey, Partner at Pepper Hamilton, will present "Getting Out Of Dodge — A Strategic Checklist For Getting Out of Unfriendly Jurisdictions and Practical Tips for Using Personal Jurisdiction, Forum Non Conveniens, Severance Motions, and CAFA And Other Removal Arguments" at the American Conference Institute's 20th Annual Drug and Medical Device Litigation Conference.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Examining the disparate procedural mechanisms in your arsenal and considerations for using them in the knock-down drag-out battle for removal to federal court
  • CAFA removal provisions — diversity and mass actions
  • Federal question arguments and specific versus general jurisdiction post-Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of San Francisco County
  • Severing claims that fall short of removal pursuant to CAFA numbers based on personal jurisdiction in the wake of Daimler AG v. Bauman and Walden v. Fiore
  • Understanding how Mylan v. Astra Zeneca will affect the personal jurisdiction analysis
  • Transfers under 1404
  • Growing case law surrounding forum non conveniens: will this kill mass proceedings in certain states?
  • Fraudulent joinder/misjoinder
• Update on plaintiffs’ efforts to manipulate venue and jurisdiction
  • Anticipating more cases in which plaintiffs attempt to defeat the CAFA removal provisions by filing no more than a hundred actions per complaint in state court
  • Multi-plaintiff filings with spoiler plaintiffs and defendants
  • Overview of some of the recent cases regarding removal between state and federal court: what is the defense scorecard?
• Best practices for litigating in plaintiff friendly jurisdictions when manufacturers are unable to defeat remand to state court
  • How to improve your chances in unfriendly jurisdictions
  • Conducting discovery in full-discovery states 
  •  Litigating in multi-plaintiff cases