We’ve been pondering what to do with the latest 70+ page whopper from the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas for a couple of weeks. All the while Maya v. Benefit Risk Management, 2012 Phila. Ct. Com. Pl. Lexis 449 (Pa. C.P. Philadelphia Co. Dec. 31, 2012) (also at 2013 WL 663158 – but essentially useless due to lack of internal pagination), has been sitting around, begging for us to take it on.
What would it take to make Maya better?
Well, just about everything would have to be substituted. If that happened the $10 million plaintiff’s verdict in Maya would be toast…. Which reminds of the classic substitution scene from the movie Five Easy Pieces (hence the title of the post). That was pretty brutal, but so is the opinion in Maya. We’ll try to be less brutal in our analysis than Jack Nicholson was before he became a Lakers fan. But without any substitutions – well, ATRA might want to think again before letting the Philadelphia court system off the hook.
A lot of things could be said about the Maya decision – since it touches on so many issues. But we’ll limit ourselves to five – the five theses in Maya that are just plain wrong.
Waiver for Preserving Too Many Issues
Maya was another high-stakes SJS/TENS case. This medical condition is terrible, but it is an example of what used to be called an “idiosyncratic reaction.” Most doctors – at least those not serving as plaintiffs’ experts – admit that they don’t know what triggers the disease. It’s been blamed on just about every drug (prescription or non-prescription) imaginable, but it could just as well be a reaction to something else in the environment, something that’s ordinarily non-bioreactive, such as plastic. But plastic manufacturers don’t have to keep records of adverse reactions. Drug companies do, and those reactions duly get listed on product labeling – whether there’s causation or not.Continue Reading Five Uneasy Theses