It’s football season! That means beautiful fall weather, tailgating, pots of chili, rooting your favorite team to victory, and wallowing in their losses. It’s Army v. Navy and Ohio State v. Michigan. It’s Packers v. Bears and Steelers v. Ravens. If you are a true fan of the game, it doesn’t matter that in a
Still more Zantac MDL dismissal orders.
Today’s installment grants dismissal of the plaintiffs’ medical monitoring claims, and also sheds some light on the questionable factual basis of everything being asserted in this MDL. As we’ve pointed out in our prior posts (such as this one), plaintiffs allege that the active ingredient in this drug
If hard cases make bad law, big cases make really bad law. No cases are bigger than product liability multidistrict litigations. Some have populations dwarfing the towns where many of you were raised. Perhaps it is the high stakes involved, or perhaps it is the judicial obsession with settling many thousands of cases ASAP, but
Uncertainty plagues American litigation and accounts for the frequent analogy to a lottery. The same case tried before two different juries will produce two very different results. Within the same jurisdiction, a plaintiff might ring the bell this week, but get zeroed out the next. Factor in different jurisdictions, and the possibilities will wander all
About two months ago we wrote the post Complaints Are Like Onions, They Have Layers about the need for courts to “address the viability of each claim” on a motion to dismiss. Bayer Corporation v. Leach, 2020 WL 3118509 at *1 (Ind. S. Ct. Jun. 12, 2020). Complaints need to be pulled apart and
If, like this blogger, you had small children in the early 2000s, subconsciously you may have read today’s title with a Scottish brogue. That’s because it might recall a scene from Shrek where Mike Myers (Shrek) and Eddie Murphy (Donkey) are having a philosophical conversation about the many and varied attributes of ogres. “Ogres are
If asbestos litigation reminds of the 100 Years War, and the Bone Screw litigation recalls (for us) the winning side of the Franco-Prussian War, or Napoleon’s Italian Campaign − pelvic mesh litigation seems like something out of a different war. Try World War I. It’s not quite the Somme (at least not yet) but more
We’d like the answer to that question to be – most of the time. But that’s too much to hope for. After all, lawsuits are brought in California. With its plaintiff-friendly laws, indeed, California is an often sought after venue by mass tort products liability plaintiffs. But, according to a recent California appellate court
We have another guest post today, from Reed Smith‘s own Erica Yen. This one is about a recent, interesting decision concerning the interaction between the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) and the common law – with a good result this time. As always, our guest bloggers are 100% responsible for their posts,
This is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Looking back at our posts on innovator liability, it’s becoming more and more difficult to title them. According to the DDL blog, innovator liability has been rejected, abolished, denied, refused, disallowed. You get the idea. With the news from earlier this summer that the California Supreme Court is going to consider the issue – which will hopefully spell the demise of Conte – we may be nearing the end of the chapter on innovator liability. In the meantime, we’ll keep bringing you the wins as they stack up.
Today’s case was actually decided right around the time the California Supreme Court decided to take on the issue. Gillette v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharm., Inc., 2016 WL 4217758 (Mag. D. Minn. Jun. 16, 2016). The decision didn’t come to our attention, however, until the magistrate’s report and recommendation was adopted last week. See 2016 WL 4203422 (D. Minn. Aug. 9, 2016).
The Gillette decision comes out of the Mirapex MDL and involves the application of Indiana law. Indiana products liability claims are governed by the Indiana Products Liability Act (“IPLA”) which provides a single cause of action subsuming all common law strict liability and negligence claims, as well as tort based warranty claims. Gillette, 2016 WL 4217758 at *3-4, *6. So, plaintiff in this case had one cause of action based on her allegations that her use of Mirapex caused her to gamble compulsively.
But was it Mirapex that plaintiff was taking at the time she suffered her injuries? According to her pharmacy records, plaintiff was prescribed Mirapex from 2001 until 2015. Id. at *1-2. It appears that from 2001 until April 2010, plaintiff’s pharmacy filled her prescriptions with brand name Mirapex. In April 2010, when her prescribing physician increased plaintiff’s dosage, her pharmacy began filling her Mirapex prescriptions with its generic equivalent – pramipexole dihydrochloride. Id. at *1. From April 2010 until late 2015, plaintiff received the generic version of the drug manufactured by a succession of four different generic drug manufacturers. Id. at *1-2.
Continue Reading Brand Defendants Thwart Another Innovator Liability Claim