Next week, under pressure from the Drug and Device Law Lifelong Best Friend, we are participating in a “murder mystery dinner theatre” in the “conservatory” of a local cemetery.   (We didn’t know cemeteries had “conservatories.”) It is a Halloween-themed event, with costumes encouraged, and we may or may not wear our eerily-lifelike Standard Poodle mask/hood. In any event, the premise of the event is that actors are scattered among the paying audience “guests.” At some point during the cocktail hour, one of the actors will “die.” During the ensuing dinner hour, clues are revealed and everyone tries to solve the “murder” in time for dessert. We think this sounds like fun, and we like the idea of not knowing what to expect and not being able to predict the result.

But sometimes a predictable result (to the extent that preemption jurisprudence is ever predictable) is just fine. In In re Bard IVC Filters Prods Liab. Litig. (Hyde v. C. R. Bard, Inc.), 2018 WL 4356638 (D. Ariz. Sept. 12, 2018), the plaintiff was implanted with the defendant’s inferior vena cava (“IVC”) filter. Three years later, the plaintiff learned that the filter had perforated the IVC wall and had fractured. The filter was removed shortly thereafter. The plaintiff filed suit, asserting the usual panoply of product liability claims. After the court granted summary judgment for the defendant on several claims, the plaintiff’s claims for strict liability design defect and negligent design remained pending, along with a claim for negligence per se.

Under Wisconsin law, which governed the plaintiff’s substantive claims, a claim for negligence per se arises from violation of a statute, where the plaintiff can show that “(1) the harm inflicted was the type the statute was designed to prevent; (2) the person injured was within the class of persons sought to be protected; and (3) there is some expression of legislative intent that the statute become a basis for imposition of civil liability.” Hyde, 2018 WL 4356638 at *2. In her negligence per se claim, the plaintiff asserted that the defendants violated provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. As the court commented, “Far from containing an expression that FDA regulations are intended to form the basis of civil liability, . . . [t]he FDCA leaves no doubt that it is the Federal Government rather than private litigants who are authorized to file suit for noncompliance with the medical device provisions.” Id. (citing Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs’ Legal Comm., 531 U.S. 341, 349 n.4 (2001)) (internal punctuation and additional citations omitted).   “Thus,” the court continued, a private litigant cannot bring a state-law claim [that] is in substance . . . a claim for violating the FDCA – that is, when the state claim would not exist if the FDCA did not exist,” because, under Buckman, such claims are impliedly preempted by the FDCA.  Id. (citations omitted). All correct, even if it conflates Buckman preemption with the plaintiff’s simple failure to state a negligence per se claim under the requirements of Wisconsin state law.

The court held that, as in Buckman, the plaintiff’s negligence per se claim was more accurately characterized as a “negligence claim based solely on violations of FDA regulations,” id., and was therefore impliedly preempted. As the court emphasized, “. . .where the plaintiff was not suing under state law for conduct that happen[ed] to violate the FDCA, but instead [was] suing solely because the conduct violate[d] the FDCA,” the claim was preempted by federal law. Id. (emphasis in original, internal punctuation and citation omitted). The court contrasted such claims to traditional tort claims like plaintiff’s negligent design claim, which arose from a duty owed under state law and which was not subject to Buckman preemption.

We like this correct, methodical, predictable decision.   We’ll let you know how the mystery thing goes.