Over the life of the Blog, there have been many posts taking issue with the pro-plaintiff leanings of California courts, which have resulted in many questionable decisions on issues ranging from expanding personal jurisdiction to shrinking preemption to re-writing the duties of medical product manufacturers under California law. We have also thrown more than a
Every law student learns the same tidy hierarchy on day one of Torts. Negligence is harder to prove than strict liability, because strict liability does not require showing the defendant did anything wrong, only that the product itself was defective. And recklessness is harder still than negligence, reserved for conduct that goes well beyond a
The California Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in Gilead Tenofovir Cases yesterday, and as we hoped, the Court held that a drug manufacturer owes no duty of care when deciding whether and when to develop an allegedly safer alternative drug to replace an admittedly non-defective product. The decision is a significant win for
If you share your life with a dog, you know the drill. You call them by a hundred names. You talk to them like they understand every word (they might). You make decisions about their health with the same care — maybe more — than you would for yourself. So when a dog gets hurt
You’ve probably noticed there’s been a lot of soccer going on recently. We don’t purport to be experts on the “beautiful game,” but every four years we find ourselves riveted by a sport we don’t always watch and sometimes don’t understand. The expanded field of 48 teams generated lots of unexpected excitement, and we thoroughly
A few weeks ago, we found ourselves underwhelmed by the court’s Rule 702 rulings in the Covidien Hernia Mesh MDL. Today, we can say much the same thing about its summary judgment decision. In In re: Covidien Hernia Mesh Products Liability Litigation No. II, 2026 WL 1555914 (D. Mass. June 2, 2026), the
We observed arguments last week in the California Supreme Court in Gilead Tenofovir Cases, and quality advocates on both sides put on a great performance. As we previewed last week, the case presents a question with potentially sweeping consequences for product liability law: Does a pharmaceutical manufacturer owe a duty of reasonable care
This post is from the non-RS side of the Blog.
Consider the following scenario. A fifty-two-year-old woman has end-stage left ventricular heart failure despite medical care and the latest medications. Her prospects for a heart transplant or the implantation of a left-ventricular assist device to prolong her life are limited, including by financial considerations. She
After nearly three years of litigation winding through California’s appellate courts, the closely watched Gilead Tenofovir Cases is finally set for oral argument before the California Supreme Court on Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. in San Francisco. The case presents a question with potentially sweeping consequences for product liability law: Does a pharmaceutical
The latest medical device express preemption decision, Wieder v. Advanced Bionics LLC, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70645, 2026 WL 880370 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2026), comes out of the Southern District of New York and involves a Class III, PMA‑approved cochlear implant.
Fluid allegedly worked its way into the device and caused a short‑circuit and device