With Herrmann in-house and retired (from blogging, at least), only one of us is currently a member of the American Law Institute (“ALI”). That said, Bexis headed down to DC yesterday to attend the ALI’s annual meeting.
With the Aggregate Litigation Projectnow done, we’re finding the Institute’s meetings less white-knuckle than they used to be – but that’s not to say that they’re boring. (more…)
We’re inaugurating a new feature today. It’s sort of half way between our scorecards, which we keep up to date (as best we’re able) with both favorable and adverse decisions on a particular subject, and our usual defense-side cheerleading that hails defense wins and excoriates our losses.
What we’re going to start is something we call “cheat sheets.” These will be lists of cases, similar to scorecards. (more…)
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more. Another splendid Viagra opinion sprang forth recently. This time we aim to avoid any silly double-entendres, even accidentally. (What’s that? We already failed?!).
The case of Ridgeway v Pfizer, Inc., No. 09-2794 (E.D. La. April 27, 2010), involves the application of that old law school chestnut, res ipsa loquitur. More specifically, the case analyzes why res ipsa loquitur does NOT apply.
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Lawyers for tort plaintiffs just love it every time the FDA issues a warning letter. To them, FDA warnings = liability (just don’t use the dirty word “preemption”). You can book it that our opponents will use, overuse, and abuse those warnings letters at every opportunity. They will base entire parallel violation claims on FDA warning letters. They will say, citing the warning letter, that the FDA has “found,” “concluded,” (more…)
We never know what will happen when we post something. Earlier this week we tossed up a short post about a case involving FDA warning letters – at least that’s what we thought.
What we got back was a rip-roaring comment from the attorney for the plaintiff in the case, Regenerative Sciences, Inc. v. FDA, 2010 WL 1258010 (D. Colo. March 26, 2010). Her beef was, dammit, the case didn’t involve an FDA warning (more…)
Confidentiality issues often arise in drug and device cases, usually when plaintiff lawyers want to send confidential company documents to the New York Times. But every once in a while it’s the plaintiffs who get impaled on the issue. That’s what happened in In re Viagra Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 06-1724, slip op.(D. Minn. April 14, 2010). Pfizer had earlier been unable to knock out one of plaintiffs’ general causation experts on Daubert (more…)
On Friday, Judge Posner issued an interesting opinion in Chang v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., No. 09-2280 (7th Cir. March 26, 2010). The opinion affirms the dismissal on statute of limitations and forum non conveniens grounds of claims brought against U.S. companies by plaintiffs from Taiwan. Along the way, Judge Posner has some interesting things to say about: (1) California conflicts of law rules, (2) California’s “borrowing” statute, (more…)
One of the interesting things about blogging is that a lot of people seem to consider us part of the “press” – whether that’s the “health” press or the “legal” press. As a result, we get sent a lot of unsolicited press releases, maybe a couple of dozen a week. Most of them are from various small medical-related companies announcing this or that medical advance. Since we’re lawyers, not doctors, (more…)
We’re feeling uncharacteristically magnanimous after last night’s USA Olympic hockey victory, so we’ll cheerfully report on a recent pharma innovator-liability case from the True North. In Goodridge v Pfizer Canada Inc., 2010 ONSC 1095 (Feb. 18, 2010), the plaintiffs claimed injuries from off-label use of Neurontin and its generic version. We tip the cyber hat to Nick Mizell at Shook Hardy for bringing the case to our attention. http://www.shb.com/attorney_detail.aspx?id=515
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This post is about un-preempted fraud on the FDA claims and how to approach them….
“Heresy!” We hear you shout. “There’s no such thing as an unpreempted fraud on the FDA claim – at least one not brought by DoJ on behalf of the FDA itself. You guys have said so yourselves, in your discussion of preemption and “embedded” fraud on the FDA allegations.”
Yes we did.
We continue to believe (more…)