A few years ago, we detailed the efforts of the plaintiffs’ bar to tweak the Restatement of Torts to decrease the chance that a suit for damages would be defeated because the plaintiff engaged in a criminal act. The Restatement (Second) from 1979 called this the Wrongful Acts Doctrine, but the concept has a long
The Fiction Of Non-Preempted Pre-Market Design Defect Claims For Prescription Drugs
As we emerge from our fourth month-long trial in a little over two years, we are sure that we have missed some recent legal developments. As good as this Blog is as a source for what is going on in drug and device product liability litigation, you do actually need to read it to absorb
Preemption Ends Appeal Of Dyspeptic Supplement Case
We have often characterized preemption as one of the most powerful tools in product liability defense lawyers’ toolboxes. It also gets utilized effectively by lawyers defending against a variety of consumer fraud cases about FDA-regulated products. We have, for instance, covered a number of decisions where plaintiffs complained about a range of food labeling issues
Fifth Circuit FDA Decision Puzzles
Sometimes there are decisions that we begin to read with an expectation—perhaps based on a thumbnail from Bexis—that we will have a strong impression. Not surprisingly, the expected impression is usually negative. This was the case with Apter v. HHS, No. 22-40802, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 23401 (5th Cir. Sept. 1, 2023), which concerned
District Court Misapplies Implied Preemption In Medication Abortion Case
Since before the Dobbs decision reversed decades of precedent on reproductive rights, we have been looking at the implications for drug and device manufacturers. See here and here. Our posts have, of course, followed the ins and outs of the notorious AHM (or Hippo) litigation as it makes its way up to the
Attempt To Buttress Expert’s Scant Reasoning Rejected On Appeal In Pelvic Mesh Case
We have lost track of how many times we have written on pelvic mesh cases as they have gone through a number of district courts on remand and occasionally up on appeal to circuit courts. One theme we have seen play out over and over is that plaintiff lawyers who took on more cases than
Third Circuit Affirms Mass Dismissal In Throwback Decision
Way back in September 2012, we—in its Blog-specific veiled singular usage—did our first post. We introduced ourselves with some rare first personal singular statements before proceeding to trash a Louisiana intermediate appellate court’s affirmance of a large verdict under Louisiana’s Medical Assistance Programs Integrity Law. Among our criticisms was the lack of detail on
Express Preemption Based On Forceful Agency Action Pursuant To Law
When we have given talks on preemption, whether to law firm personnel, attendees of professional conferences, or new FDA employees, we have tended to start with the Supremacy Clause and then break up the types of preemption and the issues related to them into different buckets. We have not had to name those buckets or
Will Anti-TPP Litigation Become A Thing?
We have been reporting on third party payer/payor (“TPP”) litigation for a long time. This category covers a range of causes of action and allegations but boils down to boils down to insurance companies or other entities trying to recover amounts they paid for patients to receive medical products because the manufacturers or sellers
Professional Plaintiff’s Consumer Protection Claims Were Hard To Swallow
Long, long ago, when we clerked for a federal district judge, we handled more than a few prisoner cases. We have to confess that many of the ones we saw were humorous to us, because they alleged a range of perceived slights and personal affronts as violations of their constitutional rights. (As readers know, we