We just did. Not only did we suffer through Stengel yesterday, but today we received Weeks – that is Wyeth, Inc. v. Weeks, No. 1101397, slip op. (Ala. Jan. 11, 2013). Alabama just recognized branded liability in a generic case – for fraud not AMELD, and assuming detrimental reliance by the physician. The key quote:
In the context of inadequate warnings by the brand-name manufacturer placed on a prescription drug manufactured by a generic-drug manufacturer, it is not fundamentally unfair to hold the brand-name manufacturer liable for warnings on a product it did not produce because the manufacturing process is irrelevant to misrepresentation theories based, not on manufacturing defects in the product itself, but on information and warning deficiencies, when those alleged misrepresentations were drafted by the brand-name manufacturer and merely repeated by the generic manufacturer.
Slip op. at 52. We’ll have more to say later on, once we’ve picked our jaws off the floor – and consulted with interested clients.
But, as with Stengel, we thought our readers would want to know.