The learned intermediary rule – that prescription medical product warnings are directed to (and written to be understood by) the professional medical personnel who prescribe them – is as close to unanimous as any tort doctrine that we know of. We keep a running tab on the 50 states, and the rule has support in
Scott v. Amazon.com, Inc., ___ P.3d ___, 2026 WL 468578 (Wash. Feb. 19, 2026), is one of those decisions that makes us go hmmm. Here’s why.
Scott involves very unfortunate facts, four people who, in separate incidents, committed suicide using the same chemical, which they all allegedly purchased using the defendant’s online sales
This post is from the non-Butler Snow side of the blog.
Back in November, we told you the court in the In re Paragard IUD Products Liability Litigation wasn’t quite finished with plaintiffs’ effort to impose a post-sale duty to warn on a company that didn’t manufacture, sell, or even own the product when it
Not too long ago one of our bloggers (McConnell) critiqued a p-side law review article he had received from a lawyer on the other side with whom he was friendly. Bexis isn’t as friendly with opposing counsel – Paul Rheingold being a rare exception. But probably due to his activity in the American Law Institute
Back in April, we pondered whether the new judge in the Valsartan MDL would change things for the better. In contrast to the Zantac MDL, which was established a year later and has proceeded on a very similar contamination theory, the first several years of the Valsartan MDL saw a bunch of bad rulings on
This post is from the non-Dechert and non-RS side of the Blog.
Depending on the time, issue, and players, the supposed epithets of “judicial activism” or “activist judge” can be thrown in just about every juridical direction. If we were to try to parse out the most common reason for the use of these terms
“To be clear, while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established . . . .” That is not your DDL bloggers speaking (although we did add the emphasis). It is not a drug manufacturer speaking, nor any particular doctor or researcher speaking. It
You know it’s going to be an interesting ride when the appellate brief reads like a conspiracy theory starter pack. Which is how we read the issues raised on appeal in Thelen v. Somatics, LLC, — F4th –, 2025 WL 2749888 (11th Cir. Sep. 29, 2025): erroneous entry of summary judgment on design
This is from the non-Dechert and non-RS side of the Blog.
We recently attended a successful Ph.D. thesis defense on the seemingly narrow issue of trap states in quantum dots. This was held in a dark wood-paneled room in a large science building on the campus of a research institution generally known by a short
Legal problems are often multi-faceted. Turned one way, the problem looks like one issue. Turn it around, and a different issue glimmers in your eye.
For example, in Saulsby v. Amphastar Pharm., Inc., __ S.E.2d ___, 2025 N.C. App. LEXIS 420, 2025 WL 1812450 (N.C. App. July 2, 2025), the North Carolina Court of