Today’s case, Hartney v. Zoetis, Inc., 2025 WL 2924661 (D.N.J. Oct. 15, 2025), is about a canine medicine allegedly gone wrong. But lest you think the DDL blog has gone to the dogs, this case addresses issues such as preemption and learned intermediary that are key in cases with thumbed, supposedly sapient, biped plaintiffs.
Mind you
We’ve been defending drug and device litigation for a long time, and we’ve seen many plaintiffs who experienced real injuries. Those of us at the blog, our colleagues at other defense firms, and our clients are genuinely sympathetic to injuries a plaintiff actually experienced. Many plaintiffs we’ve encountered also endured terrible circumstances earlier in their lives. Some of those can be heartbreaking. Defending cases on the basis that our clients’ products did not cause the injury or that the injury was a known and warned of risk doesn’t mean the defense bar looks askance at plaintiffs and their experiences. But, when we see a case involving a syringe needle purportedly propelled into a plaintiff’s derrière, some of us might exhibit a moment of minor moral weakness and include the above title in a blog post. Mea culpa.
Today’s case, Rudzinskas v. Retractable Techs., Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 191860 (S.D. Ga. Sept. 29, 2025), involves a type of syringe that automatically retracts once the plunger handle is fully depressed. Plaintiff’s husband regularly administered vitamin B-12 shots to her and had been doing so for six or seven years. Plaintiff claimed that, on one of those occasions, the needle from defendant’s syringe “shot into [her] like a slingshot.” Id. at *4. Plaintiff went to the hospital and an ultrasound suggested the needle was embedded in the plaintiff’s buttock. Plaintiff underwent surgery to have the needle removed, but the surgeon was not able to extract it.
Continue Reading A Real Pain in the . . .
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 week we could not resist writing about a good result from an always interesting jurisdiction (Louisiana) involving one of our all-time favorite defense lawyers (Hi, Lori Cohen).
In McGuire v. B. Braun Med. Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184172, 2025 WL 2689205 (E.D. Louisiana Sept. 19, 2025), the district court granted the defendants’ motion to
This is from the non-RS side of the Blog.
We admit that the use of “everything” in our title may be excessive. The order in In re Rantidine [sic] Cases, JCCP 5150 (Cal. Super. Ct. Sept. 15, 2025) (“Cali Ranitidine”), slip op. here, did not cause climate change, poverty, hunger, air
The day before this post went live there was a retirement ceremony for Judge Jon P. McCalla, the federal district judge for whom we clerked three decades ago. After serving as an Army officer in the Vietnam War, Judge McCalla got his J.D. from Vanderbilt and clerked for Judge Bailey Brown of the Western District
Plaintiffs bring product liability suits against medical device manufacturers when outcomes fall short of expectations. Such as when a bone plate—a device surgically implanted to stabilize broken bones and enable proper healing—breaks. Now indulge us for a moment because Bexis and Yeary learned a lot about bone screws and orthopedic devices back in the day.
This is from the non-Dechert and non-RS portion of the Blog.
We used to post about defense wins in litigation over both branded and generic ranitidine fairly often. The MDL in the Southern District of Florida systematically knocked down all of plaintiffs’ theories based on the lack of legal support (e.g., preemption) and lack of
Today we offer a peek at A. Twerski, “A Quarter Century after the Products Liability Restatement: Reflections,” 90 Brooklyn L. Rev. 1027 (Summer 2025). The “Restatement” under discussion is the Restatement (Third), Products Liability, and the “A. Twerski” is, of course, Aaron Twerski, the sole surviving reporter for that Restatement. Professor Twerski has written this retrospective law review
Medical device preemption should be straightforward. The statute could not be clearer. Federal regulation supplants state laws that would impose requirements that are different from or in addition to the federal requirements. But the law has evolved into a bit of a mess, with misreadings of certain approval/clearance pathways and inventions of exceptions, such as