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In Puerto Rico v. Franklin-California Tax-Free Trust, 579 U.S. 115 (2016) (initially discussed here), the Supreme Court drove a stake through the heart of the misbegotten “presumption against preemption” in express preemption cases.

[B]ecause the statute contains an express pre-emption clause, we do not invoke any presumption against pre-emption but instead focus on

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Happy Valentine’s Day. To celebrate, we will discuss a court decision that we love.

Preemption and the Ohio Product Liability Act (OPLA) are two of the best friends a drug/device defense lawyer has.  Both show up in Groeschen v. Alcon Laboratories, Inc., 2024 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 2 (Ohio Ct. Comm. Pleas Feb. 2, 2024). As

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We’ve pointed out several times recently (and will be pointing out in an ACI presentation today) that cases against over the counter (OTC) drugs are on the uptick. Why?  Here’s our theory: there are lots of OTC consumers, hence lots of potential plaintiffs, and there are no pesky learned intermediaries, which means that plaintiffs can

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We have no inclination to mess with Texas.  Heck, a state ornery enough to secede from two different countries in order to preserve slavery isn’t likely to care, anyway.  So if Texas wants to run its own power grid, not connect to the rest of us, and freeze in the dark when that system fails, we’re certainly not going to stand in the way.  Conversely, when Texas emphatically adopted the learned intermediary rule in Centocor, Inc. v. Hamilton, 372 S.W.3d 140 (Tex. 2012), we hailed it as the best decision of 2012.

But when Texas decides to mess with the rest of us….  Well, that’s different.

So we do have comments on the bizarre complaint that the Texas attorney general recently filed over COVID-19.  The complaint, brought under the Texas consumer protection statute, sued a major manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccine that was used to control the recent pandemic.  That Complaint alleges various antivax conspiracy theories concerning COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA, emergency use authorizations, and the media that have circulated since these vaccines first became available.  The Texas Complaint also claims that, in various ways, the vaccine manufacturer violated certain mandatory FDCA provisions and FDA regulations (¶22), did not follow voluntary FDA guidance (¶¶25-31), supposedly committed fraud on the FDA by submitting misleading data (¶¶47, 117, 120-21), and mostly that it purportedly misled the public and/or the press (¶¶50, 55-91, 154-55, 157-59, 161-63, 165-66, 168-69).Continue Reading A Texas Mess

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Back in 2008, the United States Supreme Court held, in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U.S. 312 (2008), that essentially all product liability claims against manufacturers of FDA pre-market approved (“PMA”) medical devices were preempted.  After all, PMA “is in no sense an exemption from federal safety review − it is federal safety review.”  Id. at 323.  Thus, by a 7-2 margin the Court held, per Justice Scalia, that all state-law liability claims before it – “strict liability; breach of implied warranty; and negligence in the [product’s] design, testing, inspection, distribution, labeling, marketing, and sale,” id. at 320 – were expressly preempted:Continue Reading PMA Preemption Decision Slides to the Bottom of the “Parallel Claim” Slippery Slope

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Kulkarni v. Generics, 2023 U.S.Dist.LEXIS 160730 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 8, 2023), is an interesting generic preemption (mostly) dismissal involving an “old” (pre-1962) drug.  A pro se plaintiff sued five affiliated pharmaceutical companies alleging that a course of generic prednisone caused her to develop functional myoclonus.  The plaintiff’s theory of the case was that the drug label failed

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We know this is the Drug and Device Law Blog, but the similarities between food labeling preemption and medical device preemption are just too strong for us to pass up.  In both contexts, the FDCA has express preemption provisions.  The Medical Device Amendments to the FDCA, prohibit any state law or regulation “which is different

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Bexis has been updating the preemption chapter of his treatise on drug/device product liability litigation.  He came across several preemption decisions involving defendants who employed the FDA’s “alternative summary reporting” (“ASR”) system that the agency operated for about 20 years, “from 1997 through June 2019.”  FDA, “Medical Device Reporting (MDR): How to Report Medical Device Problems,” at MDR Data Files, Alternative Summary Reports (available here).  Bexis came across preemption cases mentioning ASR reporting with respect to surgical staplers, Bell v. Covidien LP, 2023 WL 3006175, at *2 (D. Mass. April 19, 2023), breast implants, e.g., Gravitt v. Mentor Worldwide, LLC, ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2022 WL 17668486, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 14, 2022); D’Addario v. Johnson & Johnson, 2021 WL 1214896, at *3 (D.N.J. March 31, 2021), and contraceptive devices.  McLaughlin v. Bayer Essure Inc., 2019 WL 3764658, at *1 (E.D. Pa. May 9, 2019).  It appears that plaintiffs are attempting to turn various defendants’ use of this FDA-created and authorized program into a tort (variously described as warning defect or a variant of a misrepresentation claim).Continue Reading Thinking About the FDA’s Alternative Summary Reporting Program

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If a court tells you your only non-preempted claim is one based on a theory that your labeling does not comply with the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”), it’s probably a good idea for your expert so opine.  Opting instead for expert testimony based on a consumer’s perspective is risky and likely problematic.