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The district court’s order applying Michigan law and dismissing one plaintiff’s complaint in the Tapezza MDL may be the last of a dying breed.  The court faithfully enforced Michigan’s statute providing a presumption of non-defectiveness for FDA approved drugs and dismissed the plaintiffs’ case.  But alas, Michigan repealed that law effective February 13, 2024, thus

Federal officer jurisdiction is the quiet middle child of the federal jurisdiction family.  We all came out of law school fully versed in federal question jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction (and we also vividly recall our civil procedure professor using Wyoming and Colorado for all his hypotheticals on diversity of citizenship because those were the only

Preemption is one of our favorite topics, not only because it is a powerful defense, but also because the intricacies of preemption and its many flavors make it inherently interesting—at least to us.  We lamented just yesterday that many judges reflexively deny motions to dismiss on preemption, but others see the light from the get

We receive emails from readers fairly regularly.  They are usually from other attorneys, sometimes friends or acquaintances sharing their points of view or expanding on things that we may have underplayed or overlooked.  Although we don’t spend much time (or really any time) trying to predict when we might hear from others, we have noticed

We reported last year on a case in which the Arizona Court of Appeals allowed FDA-approved drug warnings to define the standard of care for a physician’s informed consent.  Why does that matter?  Well, in most every jurisdiction, a plaintiff bringing an action for medical negligence has to produce expert opinion that the defendant breached

Both sides in Gilead v. Superior Court have filed their opening briefs in the California Supreme Court, and the extreme nature of the California Court of Appeal’s opinion extending a manufacturer’s duties has been laid bare.  As expected, the defendant convincingly argued that the California Court of Appeal has imposed potentially unlimited liability on product