The plaintiffs in Acosta-Aguayo v. Walgreen Co., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34836 (N.D. Ill. March 2, 2023), visited their friendly neighborhood drug store and bought a lawsuit. Well, first they bought pain relief patches. Those patches were over the counter (OTC) products. No prescriptions were required. Maybe those pain patches worked and maybe they
Standing
Plaintiffs’ “Misleading Marketing and Labeling” Claims Thrown Out in N.D. Ill. Popcorn Case

Today’s case is not about drugs or medical devices. It is about popcorn, a perfect prompt (or as good as ours ever get) for a rant about movies. We are working our way through the Oscar nominees, in anticipation of the upcoming Academy Awards. (Pre-apocalypse, we hosted an annual Oscar party, featuring good food, good…
No Liability for Not Manufacturing a Product

We’ve written several posts about ridiculous absolute liability theories seeking to hold drug manufacturers liable simply for making an FDA approved prescription drug. Wilkins v. Genzyme Corp., 2022 WL 4237528 (D. Mass. Sept. 14, 2022), is an even stranger claim, with the plaintiff seeking to hold the defendant liable for not manufacturing a prescription drug. Fortunately, in Wilkins, those claims (several theories alleging essentially the same thing) did not state a claim.…
Continue Reading No Liability for Not Manufacturing a Product
Plaintiffs Exit Federal Court By Exploiting Their Lack of Standing

The late chef and travel raconteur Anthony Bourdain said that great chefs pride themselves on what they can do with offal. Anybody can make a fine steak. It takes real creativity and skill to turn glands and guts into something delectable. Think of sweetbreads, tripe, or liver. No, really. A couple of weeks ago on…
A Better Valsartan Decision

This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
We posted last week about In re Valsartan, Losartan, & Irbesartan Products Liability Litigation, 2020 WL 7418006 (D.N.J. Dec. 18, 2020), a decision that came in just time to take a sport on our Worst of 2020 post. Just as we were…
Ninth Circuit Trims No Injury Class Action Claims

Purported class actions on behalf of people who haven’t really suffered any injury are one of the banes of our existence. While not limited to California or courts in the Ninth Circuit, some of the worst (most of which we haven’t covered because they are adverse non-drug/device cases) decisions certainly hail from there.
Recently, however…
Too Much Isn’t Enough in California

Isn’t enough for standing that is. And, likely not enough for plaintiff’s case to survive, but that question was left for another day. We’ve done a few posts on “slack fill” which is defined by the FDA as the difference between the capacity of a container and the volume of product inside. Slack fill lawsuits…
Court Rolls Up CBD Class Action (at least for now)

We keep reading in Law360 and other publications about defense law firms that are ramping up cannabis practice groups. Our own firm is one of them. These developments sparked an interest. After all, won’t many of the principles we’ve worked with over the years for prescription and OTC medications apply to pot and its…
A Money-For-Nothing Pharmaceutical Class Action In California

We continue to scratch our heads over consumer class actions seeking monetary compensation when the customers received exactly what they paid for. We see them from time to time in the pharmaceutical space, where patients claim monetary compensation even though the prescription drugs they used worked like they were supposed to with no adverse reactions. …
Interesting Appellate Decision on Standing/Irreparable Harm

Today’s case is not our usual fare. But we’ve never seen this kind of appeal succeed before, so we’re going to spare a few minutes for something a little odd but important.
First of all, the patient and the medical device manufacturer are on the same side – they’re both plaintiffs in Alcresta Therapeutics, Inc.