First things first Wheel. J&J has until the 24th

First things first Wheel. J&J has until the 24th of July to file for Summary Judgment. A Summary Judgment is an act where one of the parties, this time J&J (who else), will ask the court in its pleadings to blow out the case brought by DECN. They in effect will be asking the court to dispense with a trial and believe their papers. I believe J&J would be foolish to put their entire case on trial for two reasons. First, if the Summary Judgment is denied, and 98.5% of them are, J&J would have failed to prove their case and be stuck for the remainder of the case arguing DECN's damages. That is a terrible position to be in. I cannot conceive of how J&J could come back from that. The second reason J&J is foolish is that the Summary Judgment request would actually lead to a mini-trial in September (a complex hearing), where J&J would be limited only to arguing the pleadings in their Summary Judgment papers. And if they lose they will have made DECN's case for them and when the odds of 98.5 to 1 work against them, they will have started the settlement clock ticking. So, my belief is that J&J will, wisely for them, decide against filing a Summary Judgment, which also will start the settlement clock ticking, but ticking a bit slower.

My good friend who posted on the message board until the threats chased him off, Mr. Sensitivity, believes just the opposite. He believes that J&J's lawyers will file for Summary Judgment and believes that sometime in early November they will lose in a route. He believes this loss will be a major turning point and pretty much force J&J's lawyers to go back to their client and say, it can only get worse from hereon, and sometime around late January or early February 2018 the case would be settled by court ordered mediation by a Federal Magistrate who knows both parties well, which would mean a trip to San Francisco. On the other hand, a Las Vegas based Magistrate might be called in. Mr. Sensitivity does not believe J&J would want to take that chance down 0-2 in the count.

It appears that the trial judge likes DECN and appeared to be offended that in J&J's Motion to Dismiss, heard in March 2017, they actually expected the judge to just take their word for it. The case has been fast-tracked since then.