Products Liability › Conflict of Laws › Personal Injury

The Ninth Circuit’s “Nuanced” Approach to FAA Preemption Leads to Greater Uncertainty and Invites Artful Pleading

Announcing a “nuanced” approach to Federal Aviation Act of 1958 preemption, the Ninth Circuit has further narrowed the scope of federal preemption in the aviation field. In this client alert, we summarize the new framework...more

Asbestos Alert: Supreme Court Clarifies When Dissolved Corporations May Be Sued Greb v Diamond International Corp...

Dissolved corporations are frequently sued after their dissolution has taken place in an effort to reach insurance policy coverage for the claim being made. California has a statute, Corporation Code §2010, which does not...more

Ninth Circuit limits Medical Device Amendment preemption of post-PMA tort claims

Medical Device Companies should be aware of a recent en banc ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that has the potential to increase litigation involving class III medical devices....more

BLG Monthly Update for September 2012

Welly-wanging, Elvis memorabilia, insider trading and the usual neat contracts cases -- all this and more in the BLG Monthly Update for 2012!...more

A Double Dose of Preemption

In medical device cases, preemption will hunt you down. In Hinkel v. St. Jude Medical, S.C. Inc., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56322 (E.D. La. April 23, 2012), the plaintiff survived removal and discovery only to be caught by...more

Product Liability Update -- April 2012

In This Issue: *United States Supreme Court Holds Federal Locomotive Inspection Act Preempts Entire Field of Regulating Locomotive Equipment, Including State Law Claims Alleging Defective Design or Failure to Warn Based...more

Putting It All Together

Our first reaction upon reading Metz v. Wyeth, 2012 U.S. Dist. Lexis 42432 (M.D. Fla. March 28, 2012), is boy, this case has a little of everything! After it was over, the plaintiffs must have felt a little like the French...more

How Plaintiffs are Playing their “Unfortunate Hand”: the Impact of PLIVA v. Mensing on Personal Injury Claims against Generic Drug...

Seven months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision finding that claims by injured plaintiffs alleging that generic drug manufacturers failed to warn adequately of the risks of their products are preempted,...more

Two New PMA Preemption Cases

You all know we love preemption. So, when two favorable medical device preemption decisions are entered on the same day, well that’s a two-fer we can’t wait to blog about. In both cases, plaintiffs tried to plead and argue...more

Why Does the Parallel Violation Exception Remind us of Nietzsche and Frampton?

Last week saw the birth of the seven billionth current human on the planet. This week sees us comment on the parallel claim exception to Riegel preemption for what feels like the seven billionth time. It puts us in mind of...more

Supreme Court Orders Ninth Circuit to Revisit Preemption Ruling Against Generic OTC Ibuprofen Manufacturer

During its October 28, 2011, conference, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded to the Ninth Circuit its ruling denying federal preemption to a generic manufacturer of ibuprofen to be reassessed in light of the Court's Mensing...more

Generic Reasoning

Have you ever noticed how if you're thinking about something, you start noticing it everywhere? For example, if you are contemplating the purchase of a soul-crushing Scandinavian station wagon, you start seeing them every...more

In re Air Crash Over the Mid-Atlantic on June 1, 2009

Memorandum and Order Granting Motion to Dismiss and Denying Motion for Reconsideration

"Judge Breyer upheld his initial decision from October that the case should be exported abroad based on a legal doctrine called forum non conveniens, which allows courts to reject U.S. jurisdiction if there is an adequate and...more

Federalism And Tort Reform

On Wednesday, we discussed the relevant parts of pending tort reform legislation. Earlier in the month we updated our favorite federalist point, which is that federal courts should not issue expansive interpretations of state...more

New Sharkey Preemption Article

Catherine Sharkey, one of the leading academic commentators on preemption in the administrative context, has released a new article on the subject, entitled "Inside Agency Preemption." Here's a link to an online copy of the...more

How Is Generic Preemption Like Fraud On The FDA?

A couple of months ago, we provided our stream-of-consciousness impressions of the Mensing/Demahy generic preemption argument to the Supreme Court. As we mentioned then, we were all set to write an obituary on generic...more

Appellate Update

Since Chief Justice John Roberts’ appointment in 2005, three more new justices have joined the United States Supreme Court—Justice Samuel Alito in 2006, Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, and Justice Elena Kagan last year....more

Supreme Court Sides With Vaccine Manufacturers; State-Law Design Defect Claims Preempted

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, ruled that the National Childhood Vaccine Act of 1986 (NCVIA) preempts state-law design defect claims against vaccine manufacturers. [See Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC, FKA Wyeth, Inc.]...more

Bruesewitz v Wyeth: Supreme Court Limits Liability of Vaccine Manufacturers

The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling in the case of Bruesewitz v Wyeth that severely limits the liability of vaccine manufacturers, thereby decreased accountability for producing safe vaccines. The question...more

Design Defect Claims Against Vaccine Manufacturers Are Preempted by Federal Law

On February 22, 2011, in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 7–2 decision that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (“Vaccine Act”) preempts all design defect claims brought against...more

United States Supreme Court Allows Rear Seatbelt Lawsuit to Proceed

Last week, in Williamson v. Mazda Motors of America,the United States Supreme Court reversed a California appeals court decision and allowed a California personal injury motor vehicle lawsuit to proceed. The lawsuit was...more

Another Liability Shield for Vaccine Manufacturers: U.S. Supreme Court Rules that Design Defect Claims Against Vaccine...

On February 22, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, 562 U.S. __ (2011). The Court’s 6-2 opinion, written by Justice Scalia (Justice Kagan took no part in the decision), held that design defect claims...more

Fasten Your Seatbelt: U.S. Supreme Court Rules Federal Seatbelt Regulation Does Not Preempt State Law Tort Suit

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court held in Williamson v. Mazda Motor of America, Inc., 562 U.S. __ (2011), that federal regulations do not preempt a claim for design defect based on the failure to provide lap-and-shoulder belts...more

Supreme Court Holds Seatbelt Suits Not Pre-empted

The Supreme Court recently decided that Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 (FMVSS 208), which requires auto manufacturers to install lap-and-shoulder seatbelts on seats next to a vehicle’s door frames, but allows...more

Supreme Court to Review Ability of Federal Courts to Enjoin Relitigation of Class Certification in State Courts

The United States Supreme Court has granted a writ of certiorari to review an Eighth Circuit decision affirming an injunction against a state court’s certification of a class where the U.S. district court had already denied...more