Medical monitoring is an odd-duck (we would say illegitimate) tort because it's almost 100% dependent upon a particular procedure - the class action - for its existence. Procedure, of course, is not supposed to alter the substantive law, but in medical monitoring it has. Thus, kill the medical monitoring class action and one largely kills the tort.

We blogged not too long ago about the Third Circuit's decision in Gates v. Rohm & Haas Co., 655 F.3d 255 (3d Cir. 2011), because of that court's evaluation of the presence of individual medical/exposure in medical monitoring claims. The finding in Gates on the predominance question, we thought, pretty much closed the coffin on class certification of medical monitoring claims, at least under Pennsylvania law.