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Last week we posted about about the Blanco PMA preemption win the 4th District of the California Court of Appeals. Now we’ve just become aware, a week later, that the 2d District has also weighed in on the pro-PMA preemption side. The case is Jessen v. Mentor Corp., ___ Cal. Rptr.3d ___, 2008 WL 142824 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. Jan. 16, 2008). That puts the decisions in favor of PMA preemption in the California state court system ahead of those agin’ it by a margin of, we count, 4-1, with the 3d District (Steele) and the 6th District (Scott) also joining the good guys. The lone adverse decision, Armstrong, was also from the Second District, and the Jessen court simply refused to follow it. 2008 WL 142824, at *4 (Armstrong “essentially “ignores Justice Breyer’s statement in Medtronic, that common law standards of care and behavior impose specific requirements”).

We’re not going to go into the analysis in Blanco. It’s thorough, but there’s very little ground in PMA preemption that hasn’t already been thoroughly plowed.

While we don’t exactly understand how stare decisis works (if at all) in the California intermediate appellate courts, we like the result. Now if we can just hold all the good precedent in Riegel….