As our loyal readers know, the blog has been keeping a close eye on plaintiffs’ efforts to apply product liability law to software . This is of course an area of keen interest to medical device, software, and tech companies active or entering the digital health space.
The blog’s own Eric Alexander, with Reed
Quick – when’s the last time that a federal court of appeals certified a pro-plaintiff ruling to the relevant state supreme court?
We don’t remember either.Continue Reading Alternative Design Issue Certified to West Virginia High Court
When we last visited the Zostavax MDL last December, over a thousand plaintiffs, all claiming shingles as an injury, had been dismissed because none of them could produce results from the only medical test that could establish causation. We ended that post with:
The only claims left allege that Zostavax caused a hodge-podge of other injuries. But it’s safe to say the nucleus of this MDL pretty much self-destructed.
One of the most fundamental limitations on tort liability – all tort liability – is that a plaintiff must suffer an injury before s/he can bring a lawsuit. As Judge (later Justice) Benjamin Cardozo, held “[p]roof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do.” Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 162 N.E. 99, 99 (1928) (citation omitted). Or, as Professors William Prosser and Page Keeton, put it in their treatise:Continue Reading Live Free, or at Least Have a Present Injury
The recent decision of the Hawai’i Supreme Court in State ex rel. Shikada v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., ___ P.3d ___, 2023 WL 2519857 (Haw. March 15, 2023), isn’t all bad by any means – but it’s bad enough, and it carries with it the prospect of liability based on a virtually limitless number of individualized genetic traits, so you can bet we’re not very happy after reading it.
You’d be right.Continue Reading Trouble in Paradise
Time and time again, we have opposed efforts by one side of a scientific dispute – typically involving a prescription medical product – to attempt to sue the other side of that dispute into silence. We came to that position through the crucible of litigation, since plaintiffs in the Bone Screw litigation sought to sue a variety of medical societies because they supported the (at the time) off-label use of bone screws for pedicle fixation. We have tried to be consistent.Continue Reading Agree To Disagree – Don’t Sue the Other Side of a Scientific Dispute into Silence
We read a couple of recent articles in the local Philadelphia legal press questioning whether lawyers participating in depositions really had any idea what the “usual stipulations” for their depositions even were. Between the two articles, they cited three cases. The issue also prompted some discussion among us bloggers, with one of us commenting that, “for decades,” he has rejected reference to “usual stipulations” in depositions, in favor of the phrase “applicable rules and orders.”Continue Reading What Are the “Usual Stipulations” for Discovery Depositions, Anyway?
At some point, early in the pelvic mesh litigation, some genius on the other side decided it would be a good idea to include a stand-alone claim for “defective product” in at least one of the plaintiffs’ standard complaints. “Defective product” was pleaded as some generic form of strict liability, separate and apart from the three accepted theories of manufacturing, design, and warning defect. We have no idea where this concept of “defective product” came from. It’s not adopted by the law of any state as far as we can tell.Continue Reading Defective Claims for “Defective Product”
Starting with our comprehensive post lambasting Schrecengost v. Coloplast Corp., 425 F. Supp.3d 448 (W.D. Pa. 2019), for ignoring 75 years of hitherto unbroken Pennsylvania precedent and allowing a “strict liability” design defect claim against an FDA-regulated prescription medical product, we have both chronicled and opposed the other side’s attempt to infiltrate strict liability into Pennsylvania litigation involving such products (primarily medical devices). That attempt disregards seven Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions between 1948 (Henderson) and 2014 (Lance), as well as the Pennsylvania Superior Court (an intermediate appellate court in Pennsylvania) (Creazzo), all rejecting application of strict liability principles to prescription medical products. For the gory details, see the prior post.Continue Reading Pennsylvania Law, Federal Rules, and FDA Standards
What follows is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.
The history of the Zantac MDL has been one novel claim after another from the plaintiffs’ side. Fortunately, the vast majority of those ideas have gotten nowhere. That’s what most recently happened in In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, ___ F.R.D. ___, 2023 WL 1797264 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 7, 2023). The plaintiffs filed something entitled “Expedited Motion to Permit Multi-Plaintiff Complaints for Registry Claimants.” This was the plaintiffs’ attempt to avoid paying filing fees for around 58,000 “registry claimants” − who are now obligated to make up their minds and file their complaints – or forever hold their peace.Continue Reading Zantac MDL Zaps Crazy Consolidation Claims