Today’s post is an update to our post from just a few weeks ago regarding McWilliams v. Novartis AG, No. 2:17-CV-14302 (S.D. Fla.). At that time, the court denied summary judgment on plaintiff’s failure to warn claims, but applying New Jersey law dismissed plaintiff’s claim for punitive damages. Since the case involves an FDA-approved
It can sometimes be difficult for us here at the DDL Blog to address “mixed bag” cases. We are quite clear that we are a defense side blog. Love us or hate us – we don’t pull punches. We hoard and covet preemption and learned intermediary wins and treat each one like the gem that
We’ve seen the latest affirmance of largely identical verdicts in a consolidated MDL trial in Campbell v. Boston Scientific Corp., ___ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 732371 (4th Cir. Feb. 6, 2018). We’re not discussing Campbell’s merits today. For present purposes, suffice it to say that the consolidation- and punitive damages-related rulings aren’t that
This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.
While the recent Pennsylvania Superior Court Risperdal decision is not a defense victory, it is certainly not as favorable for plaintiffs as they are making it out to be. While several issues were presented for appeal in Stange v. Janssen Pharms., Inc., 2018 Pa.
Defense hacks. Homers. Biased. These are just a few of the labels we have applied to the authors of this Blog. While we recognize our leanings and strive to offer something more than just cheering a decision for the defense and jeering a decision for the plaintiff, we do see some cases as
It was over 32 years ago that we graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. The three years in Hyde Park were a punishing experience. There was one class in particular when Prof. Richard Epstein used the Socratic method to pummel our intellect and ego. By the end of the exercise, we were a
This post comes from the Cozen O’Connor side of the blog.
We’ve been following the Pinnacle MDL closely through the last two bellwether trials, starting with the news coming out of the second bellwether trial of particularly curious and prejudicial evidence being presented to the jury. Given that evidence, we expected a plaintiffs’ victory, an expectation that was borne out with a whopping $498 million verdict. It raised an immediate question: “What will the Fifth Circuit do?”
Well, we’re on our way to finding out. The defense recently filed their opening appellate brief. While it features the controversial evidentiary rulings, much more is in play. If you would like to take a look for yourself, here is the brief. Below are some of the key issues, along with a quick description of the defense’s arguments:
Design Defect Claim against DePuy (Brief at 20-29): Claim that all metal-on-metal hip implants are defective is not viable under Texas law because a wholly different product cannot serve as a safer design; design claim is preempted because the FDA approved metal-on-metal hip implants; and design claim fails under Restatement (Second) of Torts 402A comment k (adopted in Texas), which recognizes that products like implantable devices are unavoidably unsafe and therefore not defective if properly made and warned about.
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
We’ve put it off long enough – time to deal with the awful decision in C.R. Bard v. Cisson, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 158814 (4th Cir. Jan. 14, 2016). When we posted our 2015 Top Ten, we noted that we were watching Cisson because it had the potential to be among our top or bottom 10 of 2016. Well, the top is definitely off the table and while it’s still early, the bottom is certainly in the running.
A quick background of the case. Cisson is an appeal from the first trial in the massive Pelvic Mesh MDL. Plaintiff underwent implantation of defendant’s pelvic mesh device and began experiencing pain. Two years later, she had surgery to remove the device, but the “arms” of the device could not be removed. Id. at *1. In 2013, defendant won summary judgment on many of plaintiff’s claims leaving only design defect and failure to warn to proceed to trial. Id. at *2. The trial resulted in a plaintiff verdict, including a sizeable punitive damages award. Id. at *1.
Back in 2009 – when the blog was still a Bexis/Herrmann operation – we wrote a catch-all punitive damages post entitled (oddly enough) “On Punitive Damages.” That post identified and briefly discussed a variety of punitive damages-related issues, including what amount of increased risk is enough to justify an award of punitive damages under applicable state-law standards. We pointed out a couple of Restatement sections, Restatement (Second) of Torts §§500, 908, that defined “recklessness” for punitive damages purposes in relation to a “high degree of risk.”
That’s an interesting question, because a product that increases the possibility of death or serious injury due to some particular risk from one in a zillion to two in a zillion has doubled the relative risk – but in absolute terms the increase is tiny.
Ever since that post we’ve been meaning to come back and examine that punitive damages issue in greater detail. Today we finally get around to it. Because doing the job right would require research well beyond prescription medical products, we looked for research help, and enterprising (pun intended) Reed Smith associate Kevin Hara stepped up to handle the initial spadework. To put the question in the affirmative, can we defeat punitive damages, even where a relative increase in serious risk is high, where the absolute increase in risk remains minuscule? What increase in the risk of injury enough to warrant sending punitive damages to the jury? Is a one in 10,000, one in 5000 risk significant enough? How about one in 1000? One in 100?
We have not posted for a while—that day job can really get in the way sometimes—so we agreed to tackle the ridiculously long decision in Christiansen v. Wright Med. Tech. Inc., MDL No. 2329, 1:13-cv-297-WSD, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115601 (N.D. Ga. Aug. 31, 2015), as a bit of penance. This act may be appropriate given the recent Day of Atonement and, much like long Yom Kippur services during a fast, the decision drags on, repeats itself, has some highs and lows, and maybe induces some confusion and a touch of a headache. While we are not looking for a scapegoat, some of the reasoning for why the issues were presented how they were presented and why they were decided is lost on the reader, at least this reader. (Much like the original meaning of Azazel, to where/whom the original scapegoat was to be sent by Aaron. Or maybe not at all like that.) As a combination Daubert and summary judgment order on a bellwether case from an MDL for a product, a metal-on-metal hip implant, for which there is considerable litigation on similar products made by other manufacturers, there will likely to attempts to extend various parts of this decision to other cases. So, we will resort to the dreaded use of subheadings in discussing it.
Background
Plaintiff had a left hip replacement in 1995 with a device that used a ceramic femoral ball, a polyethylene liner, and a metal acetabular shell. In 2006, plaintiff had her right hip replaced with the defendant’s product, which utilized a ball and cup each made of cobalt-chromium with no liner. In 2012, plaintiff started experiencing pain in her right hip and, within a week, had a revision surgery where the defendant’s product was explanted (and presumably something else was implanted). All three surgeries were done by Dr. Lynn Rasmussen, who happened to have been consulting with defendant on designing hip implants in between the second and third surgeries. In doing the third surgery, Dr. Rasmussen observed what he called “metallosis” (sometimes “metalosis” in the records and briefs), but did not send any explanted tissue or material for pathological evaluation. Plaintiff sued under a range of product liability theories based on the risk of “metallosis.” Thereafter, plaintiff named at least ten experts to weigh in on causation and defect in some form or other, most of whom relied to some degree on Dr. Rasmussen’s characterization of what he saw—and defendant filed a bunch of Daubert motions. Plaintiff filed a “motion for partial summary judgment” that preemption and the learned intermediary doctrine did not apply to her claims and, at the court’s request, the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment on all the claims that plaintiff did not drop. An affiliated defendant also filed for summary judgment on different grounds. There were some other motions we are ignoring, but everything was addressed in one big decision.