We just read one of the more remarkable decisions we’ve ever seen, insofar as it disregards controlling precedent. That opinion is In re Medtronic, Inc., Implantable Defibrillators Litigation, 2006 WL 3420285 (D. Minn. Nov. 28, 2006). To understand how this decision puts the preemption rabbit in the hat and then makes it disappear first
Judge Rosenbaum’s decision in the Medtronic Defibrillator Litigation brought to mind medical device preemption. We’ll be doing a post on that decision in the relatively near future.
In the meantime, we’ve decided that this doesn’t have to be only our blog; it can also be our file cabinet. We can clip and save here useful
A couple of recent federal appeals decisions in the prescription drug area, while substantively unrelated, raise the same question of the scope of federal predictions of state law in cases brought under diversity jurisdiction – whether a federal court has any business making novel interpretations of state law that purport to expand state-law liability.
The
On Wednesday, November 22, Judge Fallon issued his decision denying class certification for the Vioxx personal injury cases. That decision fits squarely in the mainstream of current class action jurisprudence in pharmaceutical product liability cases. If Baycol, Paxil, Prempro, Propulsid, and Rezulin, for example, could not be certified for classwide treatment, then it’s hard to
Preemption, of course, can be a valuable defense in pharmaceutical and medical device product liability cases. The presumption against preemption originated in “field” preemption cases. In a sentence, field preemption is the total exclusion of state regulation from a particular “field” by the nature or comprehensiveness of the federal assertion of responsibility. From there, it’s
We thought it would be interesting to collect in one place the hot, new drug and device product liability litigation. These are the seven drug or device proceedings coordinated by the MDL Panel to date in 2006:
In re Celexa and Lexapro Products Liability Litigation, MDL 1736
Ø Filed 11/9/2005 and ordered to be transferred