So, another year has passed.  2022 is in the books and the republic still stands, even if Roe v. Wade (and, soon, Twitter) do not.  The COVID-19 pandemic – if not COVID-19 itself, which has instead become endemic – is largely over, except for some probably PREP Act preempted shouting.

For the Blog, the end of the year means that it’s time for our annual celebration of the Drug & Device Law Blog’s top ten decisions of the year.  Some of these cases establish important legal principles, such as preemption, Rule 702 expert exclusion (don’t say Daubert), or the learned intermediary rule.  Others are important because they affect large numbers of cases gathered in the increasingly dysfunctional federal multi-district litigation system.  Some do both.  In either event, these decisions make the legal world at least somewhat less dangerous for our clients and (not incidentally) more favorable for us defense lawyers.

2021 is almost over.  Before 2021 – indeed, before the last half of 2021 – practically nobody other than stargazers had ever heard of “omicron,” unless someone was part of some fraternity or sorority.  Now everybody has.  The omicron viral variant demonstrates, once again in real time (as had the delta variant before it)…