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For design defect claims, a key issue is whether the relevant jurisdiction requires evidence that a suitable alternative design existed that would have allowed the plaintiff to dodge the alleged injury.  This blog has posted at length about alternative design requirements and their nuances.  These posts address everything from the existential question of “What

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This post is from the non-Reed Smith, non-Dechert , and non-Holland & Knight side of the blog. Everyone else is involved.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western where even the Good may not be all good.  In California state court, a demurrer sustained is a defense win, right?  Although there are some bright spots, In re Ranitidine Cases is one of the ugliest defense wins we have seen in a while, providing leave to amend and a roadmap for further expansion of the Gilead duty-to-innovate.Continue Reading Post-Gilead Heartburn in the California Ranitidine Litigation

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Those of us who took Con Law as first year law students may recall Marbury v. Madison as an early test of the Supreme Court’s place in our nascent republic.  Alliteration being a mnemonic device, some may recall that Madison was Secretary of State James Madison and the decision was written by Chief Justice John

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Smith v. Angiodynamics, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73561 (M.D. Alabama April 23, 2024), offers the veritable mixed bag of rulings. The plaintiff alleged that an implanted vascular device fractured, resulting in pieces of the device migrating to the plaintiff’s heart. The plaintiff underwent surgery to remove the fragments.  The plaintiff’s lawsuit included claims

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Back in 1997, a Chicago Tribune columnist wrote a hypothetical commencement speech that garnered a lot of attention. Like most commencement speeches, it offered uplifting advice to the bright young minds about to enter the working world. Unlike most, it directed the graduates to wear sunscreen.  That suggestion (often wrongly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) became

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We reported a few months ago on oral argument in the California Court of Appeal in Gilead Life Sciences v. Superior Court, where the parties argued about whether California law recognizes a broad “duty to innovate.”  At issue was whether a product manufacturer could be liable to patients taking one drug for failing to

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Our work on “hard goods” (automobile, appliance, fire) product liability cases is greatly outnumbered by our drug and device cases (and probably also outnumbered these days by website privacy cases).  But the history of product liability has often been driven by such hard goods cases.  Think of Cardozo’s famous opinion in MacPherson v. Buick.