A day after a state appeals court disqualified Tennessee Judge Jonathan Lee Young in an opioid case over his Facebook posts, he suggested that an old guard in the judiciary is behind the times regarding social media, but legal ethics experts said litigators could reasonably be concerned about fair treatment for their clients.
A Tennessee appeals court on Wednesday erased a trial judge's decision finding Endo Pharmaceuticals liable for opioid abuse because of discovery misconduct and disqualified the judge, saying he improperly approved the stunning sanction amid pending charges of bias against the drugmaker.
Endo Pharmaceuticals and Arnold & Porter used a "coordinated strategy" to hide key materials in opioid litigation, and the drugmaker deployed "disinformation" and "intimidation" after being severely punished for its discovery misconduct, a Tennessee judge wrote Monday.
A Tennessee judge who hammered Endo Pharmaceuticals with a default judgment in opioid litigation should be disqualified because of "highly charged accusations" he made about the case in an interview with Law360 as well as Facebook posts that were "even more inappropriate," the drugmaker said Wednesday.
A Tennessee judge who found Endo Pharmaceuticals liable by default for opioid abuse in the state told Law360 on Monday that his extraordinary ruling stemmed from "the worst case of document hiding" he has ever encountered, likening the situation to the plot of a Hollywood legal thriller.