Before we turn to today’s case, a quick update: when last we spoke, we were about to board a plane for Peoria – our first work trip in sixteen months. We were excited about it. We regret to report that we stepped out of the plane into something resembling a weird post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie.
New Hampshire has always marched to its own flinty tune. It was the first colony to establish a government independent of British authority. It holds the first presidential primary every four years, insisting that candidates visit waffle shops and bloviate to the amused Yankee locals. You’ve probably seen New Hampshire license plates with the “Live Free or Die” motto. That motto supplied the title for episodes of both The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. What other state can make that boast? And what other state with such a small population can list among its offspring such eloquent luminaries as “Go West Young Man” editor Horace Greeley, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable” Senator Daniel Webster, “And miles to go before I sleep” poet Robert Frost, and we-can’t-think-of-a-quote President Franklin Pierce?
New Hampshire has played a significant role in American legal history. Daniel Webster won a case against the Devil. One of the early major U.S. Supreme Court cases involved Dartmouth College. We cannot remember what the case was about, though we think it had something to do with Delta House being put on double secret probation. The Bartlett v Mutual product liability case gave rise to some awful rulings in the New Hampshire federal court before the Supreme Court set things right in what might be our favorite case of the last five years.
In today’s case, Murray v. Hogan, #226-2013-CV-00600 (New Hampshire App. Ct. Feb. 2, 2015), a New Hampshire court addresses Riegel preemption, as well as the dreaded parallel claim exception. As far as we can tell, it is the first such decision from the Granite State. (We gratefully tip our cyber cap to David Ferrara at Nutter McClennen for sending the case our way.) The plaintiffs in Murray brought negligence and products liability claims claiming injuries from a knee replacement gone wrong. The plaintiffs sued several defendants, including the manufacturer of the artificial knee, as well as the sale rep who was in the operating room and assisted in preparing the artificial knee for insertion. The artificial knee was a class III medical device, so it comes as no shock that the company moved for summary judgment against all of the plaintiffs’ claims as being preempted by federal law. Even less of a surprise, the plaintiffs disagreed, arguing that federal preemption does not apply because: (1) the artificial knee did not meet federal regulations, (2) the plaintiffs would like to have some discovery, please, and (3) the company is vicariously liable for the conduct of the sales rep.
Those of us whose childhood had low tech play options and at least a touch of OCD recall playing with dominoes. Not whatever the game is where the number of dots on a tile matters, which we understand exists from witnessing it in screen classics like “Boyz n the Hood.” No, we mean the activity where you line up a series of dominoes in a sequence where tipping over the first one will cause a chain reaction where many or all fall over. If you were really motivated or bored, then the arrangement of dominoes might have included the construction of elaborate stairs, towers, or catapults or tiles falling off of tables to start new chains. There is probably some app for this now.
The decision in Grabowski v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., No. 14-433, 2014 La. App. LEXIS 2367 (La. Ct. App. Oct. 1, 2014), reminds us of dominoes. (We do try to have our non-legal introductions have something to do with our purported point.) The case was really a detour from what looked like a medical malpractice action against a surgeon who performed a knee replacement with an insert that was too small for the tray he used. The details of the two part implant system are not terribly important here, but the sizing of the insert and tray should match up. The surgeon blamed the sizing error on the sales rep present at the implant after learning about it from another rep at a revision surgery three months later. Skipping over some procedural parts and a whole section of the decision about a motion to recuse the judge—arrangements of dominoes sometimes have dead ends on purpose—plaintiff sued the original rep, the distributor with whom he had a contract at the time of the implant surgery, and the manufacturer of the implant with whom he used to have a contract. The defendants eventually moved for and were granted summary judgment.
The basic idea was the rep was not liable for negligence because the duty of providing medical care to the patient—including using the right size of any medical device—rested solely with the surgeon. In addition, the distributor was not liable for acts or omissions of someone who was its independent contractor and the manufacturer was not liable for someone with whom it had no direct contractual relationship. On appeal, all the tiles fell to bring the deep pockets back into the case. (We cannot tell what happened in terms of litigation between the plaintiff and the surgeon.)
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