Don’t Say “Disingenuous”
Cordero v. Olson Assocs. P.C., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91994, 2025 WL1383217 (D. Utah May 13, 2025), is just another FDCA case. Except it is not the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that is in controversy, but, rather, the Fair Debt Collection Act. The plaintiff sued several defendants, including law firms, for allegedly unlawful debt…
District of Utah Recognizes Product Liability “Big Three”
When this blogger thinks about the “Big Three” her mind goes to This is Us – Kevin, Kate and Randall. Admittedly, that’s not the only “Big Three.” Most people probably go to Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union in World War II. But that alliance certainly was shorter than the Pearsons. Now…
Defensive Personal Jurisdiction Discovery – Why Not?
Sometimes it can be easy to believe that a random thought can conjure a real-life response. Such as when you imagine yourself taking a vacation to someplace warm and tropical (not at all brought on by mid-January temps in the Mid-Atlantic) and suddenly every other commercial you see has a palm tree, a hammock, and…
Short And Sweet Preemption Decision
Long ago, when we first started representing the makers of prescription pharmaceuticals, it was said that people did not tend to sue over life-saving medications. Contraceptives, pain medications, obesity medications, diabetes medications, psychiatric medications, and many others were fair game, even if the risk-benefit calculus for an individual patient might involve major benefits on one…
Utah Decision On SOL in Med Mal Cases Touches On Recurring Issues
Typically, medical malpractice cases are one-offs. A plaintiff may sue her doctor and/or hospital for failing to diagnose a condition or treating it in a suboptimal way. They tend to be highly fact-dependent even if the general subject, like post-operative infection, comes up fairly often within the world of med mal cases. In individual cases,…
Utah Decision Yields Decidedly Mixed Results
We had been waiting for the Utah Supreme Court’s decision in Burningham v. Wright Medical for some time. As we pointed out in a blogpost when Burningham was first certified by the district court (Utah is one of the few courts allowing district court certification), over a year ago, “[p]ractically no court has . . …
Tenth Circuit Finally Shuts the Door Completely on Cerveny
We’ve been posting about this case since 2016 when the district court first dismissed plaintiff’s failure to warn claim as preempted on the grounds that there was clear evidence the FDA would have rejected the warning plaintiff sought. We celebrated again in 2017 when the Tenth Circuit affirmed that decision. Since then we’ve been…
Yes, Virginia (Utah, Actually), There Is §510(k) Medical Device Preemption
We’ve explained at length why Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470 (1996), is an anachronism with respect to preemption, given the complete overhaul that Congress gave to §510(k). Still, strange things happen when preemption meets product liability, and there seems to be a conspiracy of silence among judges with respect to current FDA…
Certification to Utah Supremes on Whether Comment K Applies to Medical Devices – Part 2
Last weekend we returned to Utah, one of the most beautiful states in the USA. Over the years we had taken in the polite delights of Salt Lake City, the powderpuff snow of Park City, and the cinematic enthusiasms of the Sundance Festival. This time was different. It was an occasion to explore Zion National…