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We really cannot say whether chicken by any other name would smell as sweet or even as chickeny.  While we do not compare ourselves to the Bard, we can say that cultivated chicken meat cannot be sold in Florida to allow any such olfactory comparison there.  The manufacturer of just such a product challenged the

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Today’s opinion, In re SoClean, Inc., Mktg., Sales Pracs., & Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 22-MC-00152-JFC, 2025 WL 974258 (Sp. Mstr. W.D. Pa. Mar. 20, 2025), involves a lot of case-specific discussion with little applicability to the broader readership of the Blog. But it also contains some general observations regarding invading the province of the FDA that are “so fresh and so clean” (if this litigation name takes you back, as it does us, to circa 2000 Outkast).Continue Reading Same Rule, Different Setting: Litigants Cannot Usurp the FDA’s Authority

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From its start, the Blog has railed against certain expansions of traditional product liability that could have negative impacts on scientific progress and the availability of good medical products.  Innovator liability, first described in Conte back in 2008, is a good example of a bad idea.  Its offspring, the so-called duty to innovate

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Just last week we blogged about our disappointment over the Third Circuit’s resurrection of a “benefit of the bargain theory” of standing in Huertas v. Bayer US LLC, 120 F.4th 1169 (3d Cir. 2024). But we also recognized that Huertas had a silver lining that defendants could still use to challenge standing—by challenging the

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In 2018, our blogpost on In re Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder Products Marketing, Sales Practices & Liability Litigation, 903 F.3d 278 (3d Cir. 2018), was entitled “Money For Nothing?  No Standing This Time in the Third Circuit.”  There, it appeared that the Third Circuit had drawn an eminently reasonable bright line disallowing no-injury

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Long ago, a senior partner told us that clear writing flows from clear thinking. That might be so, but clear thinking and clear writing do not necessarily produce the correct result.  For example, you’d have a tough time finding a legal opinion written more clearly than Calchi v. Topco Assocs., LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist.

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Standing should not be a political issue.  Ensuring that someone who initiates a lawsuit has enough of a connection to the alleged harm for which they seek redress from a court is a key part of the broader constitutional concept of justiciability.  Because federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, they cannot decide just any