It is hardly a compliment to describe something as “plain vanilla.” It refers to the simplest version of something, sans any extras. It is ordinary. It is not special. It is dull. And yet vanilla can be a remarkable, complex flavor. Our favorite morning Starbucks cold double shot comes with vanilla. If we get a
New Jersey ain’t Florida and vice versa. Obviously, it’s warmer in Florida for more of the year and it never gets cold enough to snow. That could be a pro or a con. Florida has the second longest coastline among U.S. States which gives it a greater opportunity to have more highly rated beaches. But
Not too long ago we blogged about the value that the Product Liability Advisory Council (“PLAC”) brings to the table – particularly to drug and device manufacturers faced with relentless product liability claims. For the third time, we urged our corporate readers to support PLAC’s pro-defense advocacy by joining and becoming members.
Still not
This is a follow-up post on the case of Knapp v. Zoetis, Inc. – an animal drug case. While not our typically fare, it is still a prescription drug case involving adverse event reporting to the FDA and the learned intermediary doctrine. So, while this patient had four legs instead of two, the legal framework
California’s Proposition 65, which has spawned litigation over scientifically questionable “known to the state [of California] to cause cancer” warnings on such everyday products as cola drinks, coffee, beer, and soy sauce, see Riva v. Pepsico, Inc., 82 F. Supp.3d 1045, 1062 (N.D. Cal. 2015), took one on the chin recently in the Ninth Circuit at the hands of free speech under the First Amendment.
We can’t say it was unexpected – indeed, Prop 65 was one of the targets of the First Amendment’s prohibition on governmentally compelled speech that we identified in our 2019 post on American Beverage Ass’n v. City & County of San Francisco, 916 F.3d 749 (9th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (“ABA”). And lo it has come to pass.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit – First Amendment Prevails Over Prop 65
We have posted twice before about decisions that reject duty-to-train claims under the rubric of “educational malpractice.” Now Pennsylvania has joined the party. Grady v. Aero-Tech Services, Inc., 2022 WL 683720 (Pa. Super. March 8, 2022), an unpublished, but citable, decision of Pennsylvania’s major intermediate appellate court, applied Pennsylvania’s prior precedents that reject educational
As regular readers know, we bloggers have been following the issue of whether software of various sorts – electronic bytes – is a “product” for product liability purposes. It’s a longstanding issue, since the current Restatements of Torts specifically defines a “product” as something “tangible,” which arrays of electrons are not. “A product is tangible
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Or maybe we should say the court cooked up a particularly nasty version of Cincinnati Chili.
The mesh case of the week, Perry v. Ethicon, Inc., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56268 (S.D. Ohio March 29, 2022), is the worst sort of judge-made law.
Back by popular demand, here is the mesh case of the week: Clowe v. Ethicon, Inc., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46387 (N.D. Texas March 16, 2022). There is a bit of same-old-same-old in this case, but there is also something new.
Let’s start by getting through the same-old. The plaintiffs (the wife suffered the
The pelvic mesh case of the week – McBroom v. Ethicon, Inc., 2022 WL 604889 (D. Arizona March 1, 2022) – focuses on the regulatory status of the device. We always knew it was an important issue, and McBroom provides yet another reason why that is so.
As you must know by now, the