Our days of the week are mostly named based on Norse mythology, but our months are firmly Roman. May is named after the deity Maia, whose Roman version was honored for her role in the growth of plants. Her cousin Juno, the queen of the Roman gods, gave us the name for June. In their
This isn’t the first time, but the Blog has a problem with its reporting on cases decided in the ongoing “Opioid” litigation. As lawyers, our first obligations are to our clients, and in this instance some of our clients in the opioid litigation don’t want us talking about their cases. So when that happens, we
As we roll out of bed on the day after Thanksgiving, we are often confronted with contradictory thoughts. For instance, “why did I have that third plate at dinner?” might be followed by “How can I eat some leftovers for breakfast?” Leftovers are as much of an American tradition on this day as watching videos
Way back in law school we learned that a plaintiff suing for negligence must satisfy four elements: (1) duty, (2) breach, (3) causation, and (4) injury. Every one of these elements can be a battleground. Even what seems like the simplest inquiry – whether the plaintiff was injured – can be controversial. We have
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
Last week when we posted about some motion in limine rulings coming out of the IVC Filters MDL, most of our blogging team were enjoying a calm week after being hit by two nasty Nor’easters. We were turning our thoughts to spring. Birds chirping,
Several years ago, in a post entitled “Negligence Per Se Trivia,” we included the following:
In Kentucky, negligence per se has been codified, and claims based on federal (but not state) statutes or regulations (like the FDCA) are prohibited. St. Luke Hospital, Inc. v. Straub, 354 S.W.3d 529, 534 & n.14 (Ky.
Implied Preemption. Off-label promotion. TwIqbal. They make up a core of our posts, yet we never seem to tire of them. Maybe our readers, especially interlopers from the other side of the v., tire of reading about them, but we can often find a wrinkle in a case that merits our huzzahs or inspires
This post originates from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
A federal judge in Texas recently ruled that Texas law does not allow a claim for negligence per se based solely on alleged violations of the FDCA or FDA regulations. Monk v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72477, *21-23 (W.D. Tex
What follows is a guest post by Cara DeCataldo, a Reed Smith associate, who gamely stepped up to the plate to research one of a number of blogging topics that have been hanging fire for some time now. This topic is a type of “no good deed goes unpunished” liability – whether a defendant whose internal policies aspire to a degree of care that exceeds legal requirements can be sued solely because it allegedly failed to live up to those high aspirations. The two most common theories that purportedly support such a result are negligence per se and negligent undertaking. Thankfully, Cara’s research indicates that such liability is not recognized.
As always, our guest posters are entitled to all of the credit, and any blame, for their efforts.
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Clearly articulated company policies imposing heightened safety standards on a company and its employees can’t be a bad thing, right? But what happens when a Plaintiff attempts to use a company’s alleged failure to comply with its own corporate aspirations as the basis for a lawsuit? There is an inherent tension between a company’s desire to set high standards for employee conduct and/or its products, and the fear of liability if those standards are not met. With this in mind, we thought it would be a worthwhile to take an in-depth look at whether internal company policies that exceed what the law requires, can also pose the risk of creating a legal duty.
For those companies seeking to hold employees and/or products to ambitious standards of care, the news is largely good. Most courts to address the issue support these endeavors and recognize the value of encouraging companies to maintain high voluntary standards. They also recognize the potential negative impact if those goals were misused to create legal duties to the public. Negligence per se claims consistently fail when citing various official pronouncements that encourage, but do not mandate, conduct, such as company credos, internal agency manuals, protocols, policy statements, and the like, as relevant evidence of the alleged negligence. Many states take matters a step further and bar the admission of company policies even as evidence of negligence. The most frequently applied rationale barring the admission of internal policies is that to the extent internal rules and regulations exceed the standard of care, then they are not admissible.
A federal judge in Wisconsin issued an order a few weeks ago that covers two topics on which we often write—negligence per se and implied preemption. The two concepts are not unrelated. We most commonly see negligence per se when plaintiffs try to privately enforce a provision of the FDCA, i.e., by using an alleged violation of a safety-related provision of the FDCA as the basis for their state law claim. State law does not always allow this, but even when it does, such a claim should not withstand implied preemption under Buckman. That is because Buckman and section 337(a) of the FDCA make it clear that litigants cannot privately enforce the FDCA, and a negligence per se claim based on a purported violation of the FDCA is an unveiled attempt to accomplish exactly that.
It seems pretty straightforward to us, but some courts still resist. That is what happened in Marvin v. Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc., No. 15-cv-749, 2016 U.S. Dist. Lexis 112047 (W.D. Wis. Aug. 23, 2016), where the plaintiffs based their negligence per se claim on the defendants’ alleged failure to provide medication guides for distribution with amiodarone prescriptions. The basis for the claim was the federal regulation requiring manufacturers of some prescription drugs to make medication guides available either by providing a sufficient number of guides to distributors and dispensers or by providing the means to produce guides in sufficient numbers. Id. at **2-3 (citing 21 C.F.R. §§ 208.1, 208.24(b)).
The defendants allegedly did not provide medication guides to the decedent’s pharmacy, but do the decedent’s heirs have a private right of action? The defendants justifiably did not think so, and they moved to dismiss on the basis that the plaintiffs’ claims were impliedly preempted. Along the way, the district court ordered supplemental briefing on whether Wisconsin law would recognize a claim of negligence per se in the first place.
We are fond of Wisconsin. We once drove from a deposition in Marquette, Michigan, to visit family in Minneapolis. As students of the geography of the Upper Midwest will tell you, that took us across the entire width of Wisconsin. One day we will return to partake of “fresh cheese curd,” which we saw advertised at multiple roadside markets along the way. We have more recently learned that it is commonly deep fried and served at carnivals and county fairs across the region.
But for now, we will respectfully state that the district court in Marvin came to the wrong result. The district court held first that federal law did not impliedly preempt the negligence per se claim, and in reaching that result, it cited and quoted extensively from the Seventh Circuit’s abominable Bausch opinion. Faithful readers will be familiar with the disdain we have heaped on Bausch for, among other things, its recognition of a “parallel claim” based on even the most general FDA regulations and its blithe rejection of implied preemption without citing or even acknowledging section 337(a). The posts are too numerous to list, but you can get the gist here and here.