There has been a veritable pandemic of posts about Covid-19 regulations (vaccine mandates, restrictions on indoor gatherings, etc.) on the DDL blog as of late, so we thought we’d take a break from the craziness and report on a good, old-fashioned medical device preemption case. And yet we still found ourselves encountering a loathsome disease

Perhaps the biggest conflict among the circuits in PMA preemption cases involves the extent to which plaintiffs can get away with pleading essentially nothing to support supposed “parallel” violation claims, on the one hand, or on the other must plead a particularized violation of an FDA regulation (usually a “Current Good Manufacturing Practice” or “CGMP”)

We have made it no secret that we think the Ninth Circuit wrongly decided Stengel v. Medtronic.  That is the case where the Ninth Circuit reversed express preemption of claims involving a pre-market approved medical device by divining a “parallel” state-law duty to report adverse events to the FDA.  As we have said here

The district court’s order dismissing claims in Ebrahimi v. Mentor Worldwide LLC, No. CV 16-7316, 2017 WL 4128976 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 15, 2017), is a good antidote to the Ninth Circuit’s wrongly decided opinion in Stengel v. Medtronic. Stengel is where the Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiff avoided express preemption by alleging