Adverse Event Reporting

Subscribe to Adverse Event Reporting

Today we report on a recent decision dismissing manufacturing-defect, warranty, and failure-to-warn claims arising from an allegedly defective breast implant. Although the decision, D’Addario v. Johnson & Johnson, 2021 WL 1214896 (D.N.J. 2021), does not stray far from the beaten path, it covers ground worth revisiting. The decision is a useful (if cursory) reminder…

This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.

When we posted about Sikkelee v. Precision Airmotive Corporation, 907 F.3d 701 (3d. Cir. 2018) we thought it should be the end of failure-to-report claims in the Third Circuit.  But, since that decision was about an FAA failure-to-report claim, we felt it was…

It would seem to go without saying that for a defendant to be liable for the purported “common-law” claim of failure to report adverse events to the FDA, there must actually be some adverse events that needed to be reported.  One would think so, but certain California breast implant plaintiffs (yes, some still exist) would…

If a court acknowledges that no state or federal appellate courts in the jurisdiction have addressed the question before it, we think at a minimum there also should be an acknowledgement of the Erie doctrine. Yet, in the case of Fogel v. Sorin Group USA, Inc., 2018 WL 4680022 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 28, 2018) you…

This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog only.

We truly dislike decisions that find that claims of failure to report adverse events to the FDA are non-preempted, parallel violation failure to warn claims. Failure to report claims are not parallel.  Federal law does not require warnings to plaintiff or her doctors. …

We have blogged before about the Mirena IUD litigation. Cases alleging injuries from device migration and uterine perforation were centralized in an MDL in the Southern District of New York, but, as we reported here, summary judgment was granted for the defendants in all of those cases when Daubert motions disposed of the plaintiffs’…

As we blogged at the time, we believe that the Ninth Circuit made a historic error in Stengel v. Medtronic Inc., 704 F.3d 1224 (9th Cir., 2013) (en banc), when it equated routine product liability inadequate warning claims with indirect third-party warning claims where the third party is a governmental agency – that is, the FDA.  Validating such allegations could have much broader implications – on everything from statements made to insurance regulators to child abuse reporting requirements – but, even limited to the FDA, it creates precisely the same perverse incentive “to submit a deluge of information that the [FDA] neither wants nor needs” that supported preemption of other tort claims challenging the accuracy/completeness of FDA submissions in Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs’ Legal Committee, 531 U.S. 341, 351 (2001). But the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Stengel, so life goes on.

To the extent that Stengel had any redeeming feature, it is found in the 7-judge concurrence (a majority opinion, really, since 11 judges were sitting for the en banc decision), which recognizes that causation is particularly problematic where a federal agency with preemptive power is a middle-man in state-law litigation:

Because they predicate their claim on [defendant’s] reporting duty to the FDA, as they must to avoid express preemption, [plaintiffs] face a causation hurdle that would not otherwise exist.  To prevail, they will ultimately have to prove that if [defendant] had properly reported the adverse events to the FDA as required under federal law, that information would have reached [the prescribing] doctors in time to prevent [plaintiffs’] injuries. But at this juncture − a request for leave to amend their complaint – [plaintiffs’] allegations of causation are adequate.

Stengel, 704 F.3d at 1234-35 (concurring opinion). Stengel cited to the causation theory described in Hughes v. Boston Scientific Corp., 631 F.3d 762 (5th Cir. 2011):

[Plaintiff’s] primary causation theory is that if [defendant] had reported the true number of injuries and malfunctions related to [the risk] caused by the [device], this information would have appeared on the FDA’s MAUDE internet database [of adverse events reported about medical devices] and in medical journals, and with this information [the prescriber] would not have recommended the [device] to [plaintiff] for treatment.

Id. at 776.

…
Continue Reading Causation Issues in Failure-To-Report Cases – Post-Stengel Precedent