Some of our posts about challenges to Covid-19 vaccines or treatments might have been a bit … strident. It is hard to be otherwise when the cases involve such high stakes and so little merit.
But this time we will try to take our cue from the court in Frey v. Trinity Health-Michigan, 2021
We have been following the issue of potential product liability for software, including in connection with medical devices, for a while. Much of our attention, predictably, has been on FDA regulation of device software, including issues related to resistance to hacking to obtain information or cause harm. Like here, here, here, and
There was once a musician from Michigan who rapped that “the FCC won’t let me be.” This was in the context of claiming that his songs were only permitted to be played over this thing called radio with edits that he apparently found unacceptable. In Cyr v. Ford Motor Co., No. 345751, 2019 WL
On our office bulletin board, we keep a post-it listing the states we have not yet visited. We are down to ten, and we expected to cross Oregon off after a deposition last week. But our deponent moved from Bend, Oregon to St. George, Utah. We’ve been to Utah lots of times, and were annoyed
With new grass on the field, the 2019 baseball season is underway and optimism springs eternal. Here in Philadelphia, the Phillies have actually around the top of the NL east for the first time since, umm…., last year actually. But this year, having added possibly the best player and best catcher in the league,
A product is not defective simply because someone was harmed by it. That seems a simple enough point. Courts often acknowledge it, though sometimes in a perfunctory, mumbling fashion. What gives teeth to the mumbling is when state law requires the plaintiff to show a safer alternative product. If really pressed, many plaintiffs cannot articulate
This post comes from the Cozen O’Connor side of the blog.
Michigan’s product liability statute says that a drug is neither defective nor unreasonably dangerous, and the manufacturer and seller cannot be liable in a product liability suit, if the FDA approved it and the drug and its labeling were in compliance with that
A (relatively) long time ago in a state not so far away, the Michigan Legislature enacted the Michigan Product Liability Act. It contained a provision providing the manufacturers of FDA-approved drugs with immunity from product liability absent the application of two narrow exceptions. A challenge to the constitutionality of the provision soon followed and the
We remember how, shortly after the atrocious decision in Johnson & Johnson v. Karl, 647 S.E.2d 899 (W. Va. 2007), rejecting altogether the learned intermediary rule, litigation tourists visiting West Virginia argued that Karl represented that state’s “public policy” and therefore the learned intermediary rule could not apply even to their out-of-state cases under
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Usually when we are talking about Michigan, it’s to praise the Michigan Products Liability Act which cuts off civil liability for drug manufacturers “if the drug was approved for safety and efficacy by the United States food and drug administration, and the drug and