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It has been a little over two years since the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bauman v. AG Daimler, and, from our perspective, its impact has been significant, even earth shaking (no pun intended, and we have a San Francisco office and certainly would not make light of earthquakes).  We previously discussed Bauman’s impact on the analysis of personal jurisdiction on several occasions, in the context of notable decisions, good and bad (thank you, California), and in the hotly contested area of consent through registration to do business in a state, here.

Our breaking news is one of the biggest post-Bauman mass tort jurisdictional wins.  The Second Circuit held – in the context of asbestos mass tort litigation – that a company with “continuous and systematic” business in a state (Connecticut) can’t be sued by out-of-state litigation tourist plaintiffs over out-of-state asbestos exposure.   Brown v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 814 F.3d 619, No. 14‐4083, slip op. (2d Cir. Feb. 18, 2016).  Having a major facility in the jurisdiction, and acquisition of a major in-state operating subsidiary, along with “significant” revenue wasn’t enough for the defendant to be “at home.”  Id. at 18-25.  Compared to the defendant’s total activities, there was nothing “exceptional.”  Id.Continue Reading Breaking News – Bauman Trumps Jurisdiction By Consent in Second Circuit – and New Post-Bauman Cheat Sheet on General Personal Jurisdiction

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Whenever we learn about the entry of a Lone Pine order, we take the opportunity to extoll the virtues of Lore v. Lone Pine Corp., 1986 WL 637507 (N.J. Sup. Ct. Nov. 18, 1986) in which a New Jersey state court judge ordered plaintiffs to offer proof connecting the defendant’s product to the plaintiff’s alleged

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After getting the latest favorable Facebook discovery decision in Largent v. Reed, and seeing that Largent cited to a recent New York case that we didn’t know about, we’ve come to the (probably belated) conclusion that the fast-developing area of e-discovery for defendants with respect to social media maintained by plaintiffs is worthy of

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It’s no secret that non-medical device preemption arguments haven’t been as successful after Wyeth v. Levine as they were before.  Here at the Drug and Device Law Blog, we like to provide information, but we also follow a defense Hippocratic Oath not to do harm by doing the other side’s research for them.  Our “

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In the last month, we’ve seen two more appellate decisions definitively rejecting the idea of some sort of separate cause of action – apart from warning or design defect – for “failure to test,” whatever that might be.  In the drug area, as we reported before, the Pennsylvania Superior Court thoroughly killed the concept in Lance v. Wyeth:

[Plaintiff] also maintains that her alleged her causes of action, including her claims for “unreasonable marketing” and “negligent failure to withdraw,” are sustainable because they are akin to a failure to inspect and/or test claim.  Citing Hoffman v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 485 F.2d 132, 140-41 (3d. Cir.1973), [plaintiff] argues that a failure to test claim is valid cause of action. We disagree.
In Hoffman, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit applied Pennsylvania law and concluded that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that the manufacturer failed to adequately test its drug to discover potentially harmful side-effects.  485 F.2d at 140-41.  Regardless of the Hoffman decision, which is not binding upon this Court, Pennsylvania law has not recognized an independent tort for negligent failure to test.  In fact, we have held that “the claim for ‘negligent failure to test’ is not a viable cause of action recognized by our courts[.]”  Viguers v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 837 A.2d 534, 541 (Pa. Super. 2003), aff’d, 881 A.2d 1262 (Pa. 2005).
If there is a duty to test and/or inspect in Pennsylvania, it does not exist as an independent cause of action, but rather, is subsumed within [plaintiff’s] other claims. . . . Therefore, even if there is a general duty to inspect and/or test under Pennsylvania law, it would be subsumed within [plaintiff’s] design defect claims and/or any potential failure to warn claim that [plaintiff] may have had. Because failure to test is not an independent cause of action in Pennsylvania, [plaintiff’s] arguments to the contrary fail.

4 A.3d 160, 168-69 (Pa. Super Aug. 2, 2010) (some citations omitted).  In Lance, plaintiffs did not pursue an independent testing-related claim in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and conceded that testing was “part and parcel of her negligent-marketing claim.”  Lance v. Wyeth, 85 A.3d 434, 460 (Pa. 2014).

Then along comes the South Carolina Supreme Court, and (as we also mentioned before) it does a number on the purported duty to test in Branham v. Ford Motor Co.:

In addition, [defendant] asserts there is no separate “failure to test claim” apart from the duty to design and manufacture a product that is not defective and unreasonably dangerous. We agree, for if a product is not in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user, an alleged failure to test cannot be the proximate cause of an injury. The failure to establish that the seatbelt sleeve was in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user for purposes of the strict liability claim requires the dismissal of the companion negligence claim.

2010 WL 3219499, at *2 (S.C. Aug. 16, 2010).
Inspired by these two recent decisions – one in our pharma sandbox, and the other a more general product liability case – we’ve decided to make the non-existent duty to test the subject for our latest cheat sheet.  So that’s what the rest of this post is, a list of all the cases we could find where the misbegotten idea of some separate and independent duty to test has been rejected by a court.  No half-measures here.  To get on this list the court has to hold that there is no separate duty to test apart from well-established product liability claims for warning, design, or (maybe) manufacturing defect.Continue Reading Duty To Test Cheat Sheet

We love being the bearers of glad tidings, especially when those glad tidings are cases rejecting the whacky theory espoused by Conte v. Wyeth, Inc., 85 Cal. Rptr.3d 299 (Cal. App. 2008) — i.e., that a brand-name manufacturer is possibly liable even where the manufacturer did not make the (generic) version of the product

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Almost from the day this blog was founded, we’ve been arguing that class actions have no place in prescription medical product liability litigation. We’ve put up several posts containing lists of cases to that effect – but none of them were complete (or purported to be).
One of the things that we’ve often thought about

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A lot of things about that recent Gadolinium opinion ticked us off.  But one of the lowest of many low points was when the court ruled a causation opinion based upon FDA adverse event reports (“AERs”) was admissible in a civil trial because the FDA used AERs to assess causation administratively.  In re Gadolinium-Based

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We’re inaugurating a new feature today.  It’s sort of half way between our scorecards, which we keep up to date (as best we’re able) with both favorable and adverse decisions on a particular subject, and our usual defense-side cheerleading that hails defense wins and excoriates our losses.
What we’re going to start is something we