The title is ridiculous, but unfortunately true.
Muldoon v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., is a suit over “hip-replacement surgery conducted in 2007.” 2024 WL 1892907, at *1 (N.D. Cal. April 30, 2024) (“Muldoon II”). Suit was not filed, however, until 2015 – undoubtedly Muldoon is another example of the flotsam and jetsam dredged up by MDL lawyer solicitation.Continue Reading 15 Years After the Fact, This MDL Remand Case Is Still at the Pleading Stage
Not too long ago we criticized a proposed “restatement” from the American Law Institute that sought to absolve plaintiffs who acted intentionally from having their conduct (such as stealing drugs, deliberately taking someone else’s prescription), count as comparative fault in the lawsuits such plaintiffs frequently file against our clients. That particular proposal has been withdrawn
We spent yesterday in New York City, helping the Drug and Device Law Rock Climber (now the “Drug and Device Law Software Engineer” – yes, we are kvelling) move from one sublet to another as she continues her quest for the perfect apartment. The day was challenging, as these things tend to be. We lost
We’ve been defending the ability of physicians to engage in off-label use ever since the Bone Screw litigation of the 1990s. Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee, where the United States Supreme Court affirmed that “off-label use is generally accepted” and that under the law, “[p]hysicians may prescribe drugs and devices for off-label uses,” 531 U.S. 341, 351 & n.5 (2001), was one of our Bone Screw cases. Thus, we follow medical malpractice decisions, like Doctors Co. v. Plummer, ___ So.3d___, 2017 WL 242577 (Fla. App. Jan. 20, 2017), which we discussed recently, for what they have to say about off-label use. In malpractice cases, the dark side often attempts to equate “intended uses” listed in FDA-approved drug/device labeling with the medical standard of care. As we mentioned in that post, arguments that FDA-approved product labeling equals the medical standard of care are really attempts to turn off-label use itself into a tort.
The Doctors Co. decision prompted us to look back over our 9+ years of blogging output for where we addressed this issue previously. Surprisingly, there was only one, a 2007 Bexis piece that (even more surprisingly) didn’t cite any caselaw. We also found a 2009 law review article by our erstwhile co-founder, Mark Herrmann, which might have been prompted by the earlier blogpost. But nothing was on the blog itself that could qualify as useful research.
We rectify that today.Continue Reading FDA-Approved Labeling ≠ Medical Standard Of Care
It seems that we have posted hundreds of times about attempts to impose liability on the manufacturer of a PMA device that a doctor chose to use off-label. Recently, a bunch of those have involved Infuse. Cales v. Baptist Healthcare Sys., Inc., No. 2015-CA-001103-MR, 2017 Ky. App. LEXIS 10 (Ky. Ct. App. Jan.
An inter-agency taskforce is proposing a comprehensive overhaul of “Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects” in today’s issue of the Federal Register (comments close on 12/7/2015). See 80 Fed. Reg. 53933 (Sept. 8, 2015). The proposal is 130 pages long, but most of it won’t have much relevance to product liability, except insofar as a plaintiff might have been injured during the course of a clinical trial. In the past we’ve been interested in clinical trial regulations primarily for three reasons: (1) if they allow plaintiffs to argue that entities other than treating physicians (usually hospitals) have informed consent obligations; (2) if they clearly distinguish between off-label and “investigational” use of prescription medical products, and (3) preemption.
Informed Consent:
We don’t see much in the new rule expanding who is required actually to obtain informed consent – only that the informed consent requirement would be extended to a lot more types of research, such as that involving “biospecimens” lacking individualized identifying information. That seems like a lot more work in situations without additional risk of physical injury to research subjects, id. at 54028, but precisely because of the low risk of harm inherent in most biospecimen situations, we doubt it will have much impact on product liability. It could increase other kinds of litigation, however, such a privacy (won’t keeping all these informed consent forms effectively re-identify the specimens?) and intellectual property (identifiable research subjects are more likely to want a piece of the economic “pie” created through research using their specimens).Continue Reading Anything in the New Clinical Trial Rules of Interest to Product Liability? Not Really.
Any time you find yourself drawing an analogy to asbestos lawsuits, you know you’re in trouble. We have too often heard plaintiff lawyers or, worse, judges advocate for borrowing procedures from asbestos litigation. Almost always those procedures would make it easier for plaintiffs to ‘prove’ little things like product identification, and would abridge defendants’ rights
Since the beginning of 2014, five states that we know of have enacted what is called “Right to Try” statutes. See Ariz. R.S.A. §36-1311 to -1314; Colo. R.S.A. §§25-45-101 to -108; La. R.S. §1300.381-386; Mich. C.L.A. §§16221, 26451; V.A. Mo. S. §191.480. “Right to Try” (a play on right to die) legislation addresses a serious subject as to which there is no easy answer. There are still a lot of incurable diseases out there. When somebody is afflicted with such a disease, all established treatments have failed, and that person is facing certain death, can that person have access to unapproved drugs – those that are still “investigational” in FDA parlance – on the theory that s/he has nothing to lose?
We’ve been interested in the issue of what is sometimes referred to “compassionate use” of unapproved products still in the pipeline ever since the we blogged on the Abigail Alliance litigation back in 2007. For those of you not reading us then, we praised the D.C. Circuit’s rejection of any constitutional right for terminally–ill patients to demand access to investigational drugs. Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach, 495 F.3d 695, 710-11 (D.C. Cir. 2007).
We did that because the next step, after establishing such a constitutional right as against the FDA, would have been to file suit against our clients (the government usually doesn’t have the drugs, the manufacturers do) to “enforce” that right by demanding that drug companies supply them with the unapproved drugs they sought. Sure enough, that’s happened, too, even without the purported constitutional right. We discussed a number of such cases (all, thankfully unsuccessful) here.Continue Reading On “Right To Try” Legislation
We’ve blogged a number of times about the illogical, and often downright counterproductive, nature of the FDA’s position that regulated manufacturers are generally banned from providing the medical community (or the public) with truthful information about the off-label uses of their products. Even information about the risks of off-label uses cannot be included on a
Our first reaction to Zeman v. Williams, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91501 (D. Mass. July 7, 2014), wasn’t related to the fact that it involved a federal court recognizing a cause of action previously unrecognized by Massachusetts state courts. Our first reaction was that the case shouldn’t be complicated. The plaintiff participated in a clinical trial involving a bilateral gene transfer, which is a new procedure intended to treat Young-Onset Parkinson’s Disease. Id. at *3. As the “bilateral” in its name implies, a bilateral gene transfer consists of two injections of genes into the brain, one into the right side and one into the left. Id. at *3-4. But (plaintiff alleged) the surgeon gave both injections to the left side. Id. at *4.
It seems fairly easy to identify the problem here. If an engineer designs a twin-engine plane, and the mechanics put both engines on the left side, you’ve got a good idea who made the mistake. If the Doublemint gum company told its casting director to hire blond twins for its commercial, and the casting director hired some guy named Roy, you can be pretty sure who made that mistake too. So whom did the Zeman plaintiffs sue over the improper procedure? The manufacturer and the Institutional Review Board (“IRB”), of course.Continue Reading Federal Court Finds a Duty With Regard to Consent Forms in Clinical Trials That the State Court Had Not Previously Recognized