As defense attorneys who represent drug and device companies, we generally cheer when a state-law claim is held preempted by the FDCA. We are, however, not sure whether to cheer the decision we discuss today, Thogus Products Co. v. Bleep, LLC, 2023 WL 5607458 (N.D. Ohio 2023).
Thogus involved a contract dispute between a
Today’s case, Ganz v. Grifols Therapeutics LLC, 2023 WL 5437356 (S.D. Fla. 2023), involves a biologic but also speaks to drugs and medical devices. The mixed decision dismisses design-defect and failure-to warn claims but allows manufacturing-defect and failure-to-recall claims to proceed. Although we’ll briefly summarize those rulings, the decision is more interesting for noting
Today we report on Farson v. Coopersurgical, Inc., 2023 WL 5002818 (N.D. Ohio 2023), a product-liability decision that dismissed all claims against all defendants based on lack of personal jurisdiction, preemption, and Twombly.
Claiming that she was injured when an implantable medical device migrated in her body, the plaintiff brought suit in Ohio
We defend drug and device manufacturers. Our cases involve drugs and devices. Not surprisingly, we tend to cite drug and device decisions. But there is no reason to ignore helpful decisions arising in other contexts. The case we report on today—Jimenez v. Holiday CVS, LLC, 2023 WL 4251176 (S.D. Fla. 2023)—is such a
The case we discuss today, Doe v. Ladapo, 2023 WL 3833848 (N.D. Fla. 2023), appeared in our daily search results because it briefly addresses off-label use of prescription drugs. Invalidating a state statute that would have prohibited a particular off-label use, the court explained that “[o]ff-label use of drugs is commonplace” and the fact
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
We don’t usually report on securities-law cases, but today we do. That is because the well-reasoned decision in question, In re Allergan PLC Securities Litigation, 2022 WL 17584155 (S.D.N.Y. 2022), has major implications for the parallel Textured Breast Implant MDL now pending in
Twice this year we have reported on trial-court decisions addressing application of offensive non-mutual collateral estoppel—an offensive doctrine that precludes a defendant from relitigating an issue that it lost in earlier litigation against a different plaintiff. One court applied it; the other refused to. Today we report on a Sixth Circuit decision that affirmed, over a spirited dissent, application of the doctrine in a follow-on MDL case.
Our earlier posts catalog the doctrine’s unfair, pernicious results. A quick refresher:
Offensive non-mutual collateral estoppel risks perpetuating an erroneous result by preventing relitigation of issues previously decided against a defendant. If applied, the doctrine can give disproportionate—and potentially dispositive—weight to the decision of a lone judge or jury, no matter how wrong that decision.
The fact that an adverse judgment in one case can cripple a company’s defense in subsequent cases has two adverse consequences apart from the danger of perpetuating error. First, it gives plaintiffs tremendous leverage in settlement negotiations. Second, it induces defendants to spend much more litigating a case than would be warranted by the amount nominally in dispute.
The case we discuss today, Vaughan v. Biomat USA, Inc., 2022 WL 4329094 (N.D. Ill. 2022), is neither a medical-device nor a pharmaceutical case. Nor is it a product-liability case. It is, however, a preemption case that implicates two issues relevant to our world.
The plaintiffs sold blood plasma to the defendants. When they
In today’s case, Chapman v. AstraZeneca, a Delaware state court granted summary judgment to the defendant pharmaceutical manufacturer after excluding the plaintiff’s causation expert under Delaware Rule of Evidence 702 because the expert’s opinion was not “stated in terms of medical probability.”
The plaintiff claimed that the defendant’s proton pump inhibitor, a class of
The decision we report on today, Frye v. Novartis Pharms. Corp., 2022 WL 4305656 (E.D. Ark. 2022), leaves us shaking our heads. The court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, which was based on preemption and other grounds. In the course of denying the motion, the court misconstrued the law at least once and