Not terribly long ago, we had a series of posts—too many to link—that recounted court decisions rejecting efforts to impose liability on a generic manufacturer for the standard design and labeling claims and/or on an NDA holder for injuries allegedly caused by the use of the generic version of its drug. When the conjunctive held, we called it a one-two punch. We cannot say that we coined the term as used here, but we repeated it more than a few times. It has since become fairly standard for most claims against generic manufacturers to be held preempted by the frightful duo of Mensing and Bartlett. Save abominations like the T.H. case, the concept of innovator liability has largely been put to bed like a kid crashing after a sugar high. Still, plaintiffs sometimes try to impose liability on both the generic manufacturer whose drug they took and the branded manufacturer whose drug they did not.
When they do and a court rules, we pull the one-two punch from the back of our metaphor closet and see how it lands. In Preston v. Janssen Pharms., Inc., No. 158570/17, 2018 WL 5017045 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Oct. 12, 2018), the plaintiff claimed vision loss from her off-label use of the generic version of Topiramate, a well-established anti-convulsive. For more than a decade before she began her three year course, the label for the branded version contained warnings and precautions about ocular conditions that could result in permanent vision loss if untreated. After waiting more than two years to sue, she sued both the branded and generic manufacturers, claiming the records were unclear as to which drug she took for three years.
The branded manufacturer moved to dismiss, contending the complaint only asserted claims based on the generic drug that it did not make. It is not clear that the plaintiff tried to assert innovator liability in addition to claiming that the branded dug might have been used, but the court looked at the evidence and ruled on the merits. Because the evidence was clear that only the generic drug had been used, the next step to first punch was whether New York recognizes innovator liability. Citing the same cases we have before, the Preston court held that “named-brand drug manufacturers . . . cannot be held liable to the user of the generic form of that drug, since the manufacturer of the brand named drug owes no duty to the user of the drug’s generic form.” Id. at *3.
That takes us to the motion to dismiss of the generic manufacturer, the potential second punch. Plaintiff conceded, and the court accepted, that design claims are preempted because the generic manufacturer cannot change the drug’s design. Id. at *6. The plaintiff disputed that the warnings claim was preempted based on an alleged failure to update the generic label to match the branded drug’s label. For about eight months after the plaintiff started the generic drug, its label allegedly did not match. When the plaintiff alleged suffered her injuries, it did. A few years later, it allegedly did not match again. Plaintiff claimed that the later mismatch knocked out preemption for any warnings claim, but the court parried that argument. Following Mensing, the court held preempted claims based on any period when the warning of the generic drug matched, but allowed at the pleadings stage any claim based on the pre-injury period when there was an alleged failure to update. Id. at *5. So, the second punch did not quite land flush. It may be difficult for the plaintiff to sustain a claim about the warning when the plaintiff was first prescribed the drug when she kept receiving it when the warning was updated and her injuries allegedly developed during this later period. We suppose the warning claim might get kicked at the summary judgment stage. Preston also addressed the adequacy of pleading of various other claims that tend to be thrown into a product liability complaint, but she will have a chance to try to correct what was inadequately pled. Nothing too decisive or interesting about that, at least to us and at this stage.