Category — Failure to Warn

Dec. 1, 2011 – Regular blog contributor Brian Fowler has co-authored an article with Troutman Sanders partner Dabney Carr concerning the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Pliva v. Mensing.  The article appears in the November issue of the International Association of Defense Counsel Product Liability Committee’s newsletter, which can be found here.  Please check it out.

Aug. 4, 2011 -     We are rarely surprised to hear about shocking decisions or large verdicts coming from our neighbors in West Virginia.  We therefore were pleasantly surprised to learn that a West Virginia jury recently returned a defense verdict in Hines v. Wyeth, 04cv00690 (S.D. W. Va.) finding that Wyeth’s (now Pfizer’s) hormone replacement drug Prempro did not cause a plaintiff’s breast cancer.  As the linked article indicates, Pfizer is now 8 for 16 in Prempro jury trial verdicts. [Read more →]

July 28, 2011 -  Some plaintiffs just love to paint manufacturer as bad guys.  Behind every alleged injury, they insist, there is always a well-organized, evil conspiracy to put profits above safety.  Thus, they reason, if the manufacturer did something bad a few years ago with respect to product X, surely they must also have done something bad with respect to the completely different product that allegedly caused their injuries. [Read more →]

July 23, 2011 -   On July 21, the Montana Supreme Court upheld an $850,000 verdict in favor of the parents of an 18-year-old man who was pitching in an American Legion baseball game when he was struck in the head by a batted ball that was hit using a Louisville Slugger aluminum bat.  Patch v. Hillerich & Bradsby Co., 2011 Mont. LEXIS 214 (Mont. July 21, 2011).  Brandon Patch died as a result of his injuries, and his parents sued the manufacturer of the bat in strict products liability, alleging design defect and failure to warn claims. [Read more →]

July 20, 2011 -   The plaintiffs’ bar is always looking for new ways to pick the pockets of manufacturers, particularly in prescription drug and medical device cases where medical malpractice caps limit a plaintiff’s ability to recover against physicians.  Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U.S. 312 (2008), however, this task has become more difficult in cases involving FDA-approved Class III medical devices. [Read more →]

June 24, 2011 -    I love a good British comedy, and few are better than Monty Python And The Holy Grail.  One of my favorite scenes is “Bring Out Your Dead,” in which John Cleese’s character attempts to put a nearly deceased, elderly man on the “death cart”, while the elderly man cries out “I’m not dead yet….I’m getting better.”  Unfortunately for the old man, as he breaks into cries of “I feel happy…I feel happy,” the scene ends with the mortician, played by Eric Idle, clubbing him over the head to expedite his passing.

Why is this morbid scene on my mind this morning?  Naturally it is because of yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Pliva v. Mensing, 131 S. Ct. 2567 (2011), which proves that preemption of prescription drug failure to warn claims based on “impossibility” is indeed not dead yet, even in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 129 S. Ct. 1187 (2009). [Read more →]