Next week, under pressure from the Drug and Device Law Lifelong Best Friend, we are participating in a “murder mystery dinner theatre” in the “conservatory” of a local cemetery. (We didn’t know cemeteries had “conservatories.”) It is a Halloween-themed event, with costumes encouraged, and we may or may not wear our eerily-lifelike Standard Poodle mask/hood.
The toughest thing about defending product liability cases is the occasional immersion in human misery. Securities and antitrust cases pose intellectual challenges but they are, in the end, pretty much about money. By contrast, the plaintiffs in our cases are claiming injuries to their bodies, not just their wallets. Sometimes those alleged injuries are phony
Recently, the Enviably Youthful Drug and Device Law Mother has been pushing us to plan a mother/daughter vacation. Her longtime companion no longer enjoys travel, and few of her friends share her sense of adventure. So we set about finding a suitable trip for next spring. Threshold categorical decisions proved troublesome. Our normal instinct, given
Today’s guest post is by frequent contributor Dick Dean of the Tucker Ellis firm. This time, Dick is sharing some insights on Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009), which we consider the single worst prescription medical product decision since we started blogging. Not surprisingly, Dick shares our views of Levine. We agree
We confess – when we first considered the spate of eye drop class actions a few years ago, we had trouble taking them seriously. It was tough to get excited about penny-ante allegations that the size of eye drops warranted the attention of federal courts, or warranted class action status. We were not alone in
We understand that we write a lot about federal preemption. You might even be rolling your eyes at yet another post on this most powerful of defenses, but we just can’t help ourselves. Federal regulation runs deep in the drug and medical device world, and the possibility that federal law might preempt state-law claims is
Being that it was the Sixth Circuit that allowed a failure-to-update claim to proceed against a generic manufacturer, when we got the recent decision in McDaniel v. Upsher-Smith Labs, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 17884 (6th Cir. June 29, 2018), knowing it was about whether a claim for failure to distribute a medication guide
Permit us to recount a recent travel misadventure, though whatever eventual connection we draw to today’s case will be specious at best. Last Friday, we traveled from Philadelphia to Hartford, Connecticut for a deposition. We were fresh off of a long flight home from Europe and were hesitant to take on a couple hundred miles
We immediately called for the further appeal and reversal of the hideous decision in In re Fosamax (Alendronate Sodium) Products Liability Litigation, 852 F.3d 268 (3d Cir. 2017). However, we’re just bloggers. Thus, we were greatly pleased when the United States Supreme Court, on December 8, 2017, requested the views of the Solicitor General
Prescription drug manufacturers are not insurers of injuries sustained while taking their products. Even in the most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions, there needs to be some fault—whether framed in negligence, strict liability, or something else—and causation between the fault and the injury. It is surely not easy to stomach for someone who sustains such an injury while