For several years now, the Valsartan MDL has been something of a poster child for the problems with modern serial product liability litigation. It started with questionable data coming out of a questionable lab, leading to publicity and regulatory actions that outpaced reliable evidence of increased risk from an alleged carcinogenic contamination. It snowballed
Today’s guest post is from Reed Smith’s Matt Jacobson. He addresses the latest and greatest result from litigation that has been generating favorable decisions nationwide applying various states’ so-called “blood shield” statutes (practically every state has one) that declare the use of human cells or tissue in medical treatment to be services rather than products, which has the effect of limiting liability to negligence. As always our guest posters deserve 100% of the credit (and any blame) for their work.
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Milovich v. Aziyo Biologics, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-01208-CL, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50935 (D. Or. Feb. 24, 2025), involves Oregon’s human blood and tissue shield statute. The Drug & Device Law Blog has written about similar cases before, but this one might be the best. Blood shield laws have been around for over 60 years. They sound like something that Dracula should fear, along with a knife through the heart, the sun, holy objects, and garlic. But they are not something that should scare anyone who manufactures blood or tissue based products. While states have different statutory language, the gist of blood shield laws is that blood transfusions and transplants are a service and not a sale (Dracula would agree he is performing a service), thus barring claims for breach of warranty and strict liability.Continue Reading Guest Post – The Sun Is Not Setting on Oregon’s Blood Shield Statute
We’ve written before about the long-running Muldoon v. DePuy Orthopedics lawsuit. For one thing, it’s been around forever – its facts are almost as old as the Blog. As we stated here:
Muldoon . . . is a suit over hip-replacement surgery conducted in 2007. Suit was not filed, however, until 2015 – undoubtedly Muldoon is another example of the flotsam and jetsam dredged up by MDL lawyer solicitation. So Muldoon was stale from the beginning. But it got worse. For some eight years, Muldoon sat in the horribly mismanaged Pinnacle Hip MDL in Texas. It appears that nothing at all happened during those years . . . [until] 2023, when the case was ultimately remanded, without comment. So, due to the combined lassitude of the plaintiffs and MDL management, the suit is nearly 14½ years post-surgery, and only now being addressed on the pleadings.
(citations and quotation marks omitted).
Finally, in Muldoon v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. Lexis 34013 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 25, 2025), it was dismissed with prejudice. And in the end, the plaintiff didn’t even put up a fight. Faced with the defendant’s latest dismissal motion, “[p]laintiff has declined to file any opposition.” Id. at *2. What was at stake this time were the claims that had survived the defendant’s first dismissal motion against the plaintiff’s absurdly excessive 18-count post-MDL amended complaint. We had some words to say about that complaint as well: “It is a dog’s breakfast. Or it is what our dogs deliver to our yard right after consuming their breakfast.”Continue Reading Muldoon Dismissed – The End of an Error?
Did it seem to you in law school that sometimes the hardest part of reading cases was not deciphering some obscure legal principle — say, the difference between larceny by trick and taking under false pretenses, or the Rule in Shelley’s Case, or pretty much anything in Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code —
Blair v. Abbvie Inc., 2025 WL. 57198 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 9, 2025), is, from the defense perspective, a favorable opinion dismissing (some with prejudice, some with leave to amend) all counts of the plaintiff’s complaint. The opinion is a bit odd, in a semi, unintentionally-ironic sort of way, because it faults the plaintiff for
This has been a big year for blood and tissue statute decisions. Given their subject matter, we’ve previously lamented that the decisions didn’t fall closer to Halloween. While not quite coinciding with our doorbells ringing and handing out candy to the little ones, today’s decision is close enough for a little seasonal digression.Continue Reading Another Blood and Tissue Statute Win
Adding to the growing favorable precedent concerning state human tissue shield statutes is Heitman v. Aziyo Biologics, Inc., 2024 WL 4019318 (N.D. Fla. Jul. 22, 2024).
The plaintiff alleged that he was infected with tuberculosis from an unfortunately contaminated human tissue allograft that was implanted in his spine during surgery. The plaintiff alleged
Although today’s decision involves a medical product, it focuses on an online marketplace rather than a drug or device manufacturer. And by online marketplace we mean the delivery service that has become ubiquitous in almost all of our lives—Amazon. The decision is significant because it finds Amazon, as a shipper rather than a seller, does not have an independent duty to investigate risks of the products it ships.Continue Reading Pennsylvania Federal Court Holds Online Marketplace Has No Duty to Inspect Goods
Lokkart v. Aziyo Biologics, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111265 (C.D. Cal. May 29, 2024), is yet another case arising from the unfortunate contamination of a batch of tissue allograft with a disease. We have written about similar cases before. These cases have consistently produced favorable precedent concerning state human tissue shield statutes (in
We don’t get blood shield statute cases very often, but here is one involving a human tissue-based spinal bone graft. In Sherrill v. Spinalgraft Technologies, LLC, et al., 2024 WL 1979452 (W.D.N.C May 3, 2024), the plaintiff had undergone spinal surgery. That surgery included the use of processed bone graft material, which is “made