Special Master Should Have Kept His ‘Reply All’ In The Drafts

With communication being largely online, it is important to be on top of your emails. Reading them is hard enough, but you also have to exercise caution when you’re responding to them. For example, when you send everyone an email, are you sending everyone an email? Those “Reply” and “Reply All” buttons are mighty close to each other. And if having to send out the “my bad” emails isn’t embarrassing enough, you may have to deal with being pressured to leave the case entirely.

From ABA Journal:

A special master overseeing opioid litigation is resisting a request to step down after he mistakenly sent lawyers a “reply all” email with private notes to himself.

Lawyers for two pharmacy benefit managers are seeking to disqualify the special master, David R. Cohen of Cleveland on the ground that his email “would lead any reasonable observer to question his impartiality.”

That seems a little harsh. Say you’re in a rush — maybe you just got an important email or you just realized you still haven’t caught up on the Thousand Year Blood War arc and you clicked on the wrong quadrant of your screen…big whup! The email sent out was probably some 2023 equivalent of a medieval scribe’s margin doodles, nothing that would really question Cohen’s impartiality. See for yourself:

In the “reply all” email, sent Aug. 28, Cohen apparently referred to the pharmacy benefit managers as “PBMs” and plaintiffs as “Ps.”

In one section of the email at issue, Cohen wrote: “PBMs’ goal is to complicate and delay (including a request to do nothing and set a status 4 weeks hence). I say let Ps add claims against PBMs as mail-order pharmacies. … Claims against PBMs as mail-order pharmacies will show how much PBMs knew (and they knew a lot).”

…

Cohen’s affidavit said the “complicate and delay” comment was in response to an assertion by the pharmacy benefit managers that they would have to add third parties if the plaintiffs are allowed to amend their complaint. The effect would be to complicate and delay, Cohen said.

Oh.

In his defense, Cohen had two things to say. Despite thinking that the effect of adding third parties would complicate and delay proceedings, his impromptu diary entry also mentioned that he would still allow the addition of 3rd parties. As for the second:

“I think the ‘left arrow’ for reply all and the ‘right arrow’ for forward are too close to each other on Outlook!” [Cohen] said in an email to [Law.com].

In the meantime, dear reader, let this serve as an opportunity for you to consider getting ReplyGuard for Outlook. Anything to stop yourself from looking like a Columbia alumni.

Opioid special master who mistakenly hit ‘reply all’ asked to step down [ABA Journal]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.