Ever since we rejected the concept of a constitutional “life interest” creating a right to use investigational, or even experimental, drugs in connection with the Abigail Alliance litigation back in 2007, we’ve been interested in what can be called “duty to supply” cases. Our beef with the postulated constitutional right was that, if such a right were recognized, the next lawsuit would be against a pharmaceutical company to “enforce” that right.
Well, even without a right, precisely such a “duty to supply” claim was made in a case called Gunvalson, which because it was in our back yard, we covered extensively. Our ex-colleague and co-founder, Mark Herrmann, even filed an amicus brief in Gunvalson, successfully urging the Third Circuit to reverse an order that would have required a manufacturer to supply an investigational drug outside of its investigation.
There have been a few more such suits, all thankfully unsuccessful. In this post, we want to let any of our readers who share our eclectic interest in this topic know that the best law review article that we’ve ever seen on this topic has recently been published. Here’s a link. See William M. Janssen, “A ‘Duty’ to Continue Selling Medicines,” 40 Am. J.L. & Med. 330 (2014). Free copies can also be obtained at the SSRN site here. The article is comprehensive, indeed “comprehensive” doesn’t do it justice. We’ve looked through it, and it discusses every major case on this topic. It definitely goes far beyond the
usual function of law review articles of filling much needed gaps in the literature.Continue Reading New Law Review Article About Duty To Supply Issues
