This is from the non-Dechert part of the Blog.
Over the years, the Blog has had many, many posts related to the issue of whether Pennsylvania recognized any form of strict liability in product liability actions against prescription medical products. In addition to the fact that several of the principal authors of the Blog have
Although today’s decision involves a medical product, it focuses on an online marketplace rather than a drug or device manufacturer. And by online marketplace we mean the delivery service that has become ubiquitous in almost all of our lives—Amazon. The decision is significant because it finds Amazon, as a shipper rather than a seller, does not have an independent duty to investigate risks of the products it ships.
Continue Reading Pennsylvania Federal Court Holds Online Marketplace Has No Duty to Inspect Goods
As we discussed at length in this post, since the 1940s, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and other courts applying Pennsylvania law have refused to subject prescription medical products to strict liability. That is significant because, unlike (now) every other state in the country, since 1987 Pennsylvania precedent prohibited defendants from introducing evidence of their
We generally keep our distance from medical cannabis/marijuana. We’re not one of those blogs. But if legal holdings of interest to us happens to involve cannabis, we will comment. Thus, we bring you Schmidt v. Schmidt, Kirifides & Rassias, PC, ___ A.3d ___, 2023 WL 7502499 (Pa. Commw. Nov. 14, 2023), holding that
In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover described Communism as a “conspiracy so vast” that it was impossible for the populace to comprehend it. The Palmer Raids and the first Red Scare soon followed.
That phrase echoed in our minds when we first read In re Valsartan, Losartan, & Irbesartan Products Liability Litigation, 2023 WL 1818922 (D.N.J. Feb. 8, 2023). The Valsartan opinion was similarly mind-boggling in its scope. It certified not one, not two − but four class actions: one for economic loss, one for third-party payors (“TPPs”), and two for medical monitoring (“remedy” and “independent claim”). Id. at *3. Compare that to the state of class action precedent in product liability litigation not too long ago when we made this statement in 2007:
As far as we know, there has not been a single contested class action in product liability, personal injury litigation that’s been affirmed anywhere in the federal system in the decade since the Supreme Court put the kibosh on such things with its Ortiz and AmChem decisions. That’s not limited to just pharmaceuticals, that’s every kind of product that’s made.
Four in a single MDL order? These class certifications glommed together no less than 111 consumer and TPP subclasses. Valsartan, 2023 WL 1818922, at *24. These class certifications combined 428 different pharmaceutical products, produced and marketed by 28 separate defendants, with claims governed by the laws of 52 separate jurisdictions. There’s no way on earth that common issues could predominate over individual ones, or that this morass could possibly be tried to a jury.
Continue Reading An Abuse of Discretion So Vast…. Our Long-Delayed Critique of the Valsartan MDL Class Action Certifications
According to a recent decision, one Pennsylvania court thinks that the answer is “yes.”
Simon v. First Savings Bank of Indiana, 2023 WL 5985282 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 14, 2023), isn’t a prescription medical product case, and doesn’t even involve torts, so we didn’t notice it until we recently had occasion to Shepardize (an anachronism
Not too long ago we discussed post-remand Pennsylvania Supreme Court filings in the Mallory personal jurisdiction matter. After reviewing both sides’ filings, we observed: “[U]nless the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Mallory were to act contrary to the positions of both sides, the DCC issue will be decided promptly, on this appeal.”
Well, that’s exactly what
Finally, as all the Mallory opinions make clear, jurisdictional litigation in Mallory itself is not over. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Pennsylvania statute has not
Beginning – at least − with the awful decision in Schrecengost v. Coloplast Corp., 425 F. Supp.3d 448, 465 (W.D. Pa. 2019) (discussed here), plaintiffs seeking to overturn the longstanding Pennsylvania (since the 1940s) prohibition against strict liability in prescription medical product liability litigation have been systematically attacking the precedential weight
Sometimes we read an opinion and think to ourselves, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. That is true of the analysis of failure to report claims in McGee v. Johnson & Johnson, 2023 WL 4765454 (W.D. Pa. Jul. 26, 2023). We’ve been railing against Stengel v. Medtronic, Inc., 704 F.3d 1224 (9th