We do not mean the German Renaissance painter and thinker Albrecht Dürer. His work, while a poor cousin to that of some famous contemporaries to the south, remains as is. We mean the Supreme Court’s decision in Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht, 587 U.S. 299 (2019), which has been touted for the
conflict preemption
Ninth Circuit is Gonna be the Ninth Circuit: Preemption, Fraudulent Joinder, and Lassitude
Nerds such as your friendly neighborhood DDL bloggers read legal decisions with excitement. We hardly seem alone in that regard, at least lately. Over the past several weeks, SCOTUS issued a series of major opinions on wedge issues, engendering widespread feelings of triumph or despair or exultation or fury. The “least dangerous branch” looks plenty…
W.D. Texas Dismissal of Peyronie’s Disease Claims in Johnson Case
It has been a while since we’ve written about a case delivering a one-two punch against a plaintiff suing both brand and generic drug manufacturers for alleged injuries from ingesting generic drugs. Punch One is rejection of the claims against the brand manufacturers because they did not make or sell the products at issue in…
More Revisionist HIV Drug History
“You should’ve made a better medicine sooner” sounds like a complaint, but not a legal complaint. The FDA approves drugs if they are safe and effective; they needn’t be the best possible on the fastest schedule. If best-and-fastest were the criteria, the drug approval process would be crazy, sloppy, and frantic. Or maybe it would…
D.N.J. Dismisses Drug Consumer Fraud Action on Preemption Grounds
C.D. Cal. Dismisses Beovu Failure to Warn Claims
The SCOTUS decision in the Wyeth v. Levine case created much mischief in the field of preemption. The Court’s sloppy overstatement of the significance and availability of the Changes Being Effected (CBE) process breathed new life into prescription drug failure to warn cases that should have been safely interred at the pleadings stage. As bad…
Delaware Court Gives Short Shrift to Priapism Claim
The drive from our home to the Delaware courthouse takes no more time than the drive to the Philly courthouse. But those two courthouses are worlds apart. The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas is plaintiffs’ heaven. Most judges there think everything should go to a jury, and most jurors there think heaps of money should…
N.D. Georgia Holds that Pradaxa Claims are Preempted
Lyons v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2020 WL 5835125 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 29, 2020), was a wrongful death action alleging that the anticoagulant drug Pradaxa was defective and not accompanied by adequate warnings that blood plasma concentrations should be monitored and that certain patient characteristics, such as age, renal impairments, and concomitant statin…
Partial Preemption Win On Tenuous Claims
The order of operations can matter. Back in elementary school, you may have learned a mnemonic about somebody’s aunt to help you remember the right order for doing certain math problems. In computer programming, engineering, auto repair, surgery, and a myriad of other endeavors, you can get very different results if you take the same…
N.D. Ohio Preempts Some Opioid Claims (No, Not THAT Case)
The Covid-19 lockdown period is approaching the six-month mark, from mid-March to mid-September. Throughout the spring and summer we have been reading old novels with convoluted plots and surprise endings. Today we take a look at an old case, though only from a prior decade, not a prior century. If the case is convoluted, it…