June 25, 2026 was a very good day for preemption. While one hand of the judiciary was busy with the Supreme Court handing down its 7-2 ruling in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell — establishing that FIFRA expressly preempts Roundup state-law failure-to-warn claims, the other hand was quietly doing the same thing with toothpaste. Specifically, the
In law school, many students struggle with the distinctions between personal jurisdiction, venue, and forum non conveniens (aka, FNC). In the real world of product liability, FNC is definitely viewed as a less effective tool in the defense litigation toolbox than the other two. Part of the reason is that the showing required for a
Today, the summer solstice, is one of our favorite days of the year. It’s the first official day of summer, and readers in the U.S. will have anywhere from 14-16 hours of daylight (the farther north, the more daylight). We hope you get to enjoy some of the summer sunshine today—or at least this weekend. As the late, great, Brian Wilson put it, “Sunshine, can’t get enough sunshine, I’m following the sunshine, everywhere I go.”
Continue Reading Eighth Circuit Affirms Rule 702 Exclusion of Plaintiff Design Defect Expert
The Minnesota State Fair, the biggest in the country, is going on now. If you are lucky enough to attend, you can check out the butter sculptures, eat cheese curds, gaze at seed portraits of Prince, wave hello to our law school classmate Senator Amy Klobuchar, eat cheese curds, ride the big slide (though you
We are always delighted to find a case that bars a claim based on FDA preemption, but Nexus Pharms., Inc. v. IntegraDose Compounding Servs., LLC, 2022 Minn. Dist. LEXIS 1734 (Minn. 4th Dist. May 24, 2022), is unusual. It is not a product liability case. Rather, a pharmaceutical company sued a compounder for fraudulently
There are some basic rules for medical product liability litigation, at least as we—and the vast majority of courts—see it. One is that the manufacturer of the medical product that the plaintiff used and allegedly injured her is typically the right defendant. Part of what a potential plaintiff is supposed to do during the statute
It’s crunch time people. No more browsing. No more pondering. No more scrolling. Pick something and buy it. More importantly, you need to ship it. You may not be able to see all of your family this year, but you still want to make sure your gift makes it under their tree. If so, today
We are writing about a case that does not involve drugs or devices because it runs through some of the very same personal jurisdiction issues we have warned about post-Bauman. Adams v. NHL, MDL No, 14-2551, Case No. 15-cv-00472 (SRN/JSM), 2019 WL 5079980 (D. Minn. Oct. 10, 2019), is a case from the
If preemption had a family tree, the drug and device branch would be heavy. And, as our scorecards and cheat sheets demonstrate, there are obvious sub-branches that sprouted out of major Supreme Court decisions. We have the Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009) pharmaceutical branch; the Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S.
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
What happens when a case involving a medical device that received Pre-Market Approval from the FDA survives, or at least some part of it survives, a motion to dismiss based on preemption? In recent years, as the law has developed and become increasingly favorable