“Co-promotion,” for those not familiar with the term, is a contractual arrangement between two drug companies. The details will differ, but basically one company has a drug but not enough sales people. The second company – the co-promoter – has a larger (or in some other way better situated) sales force, and no competing drug. By signing a co-promotion agreement, the second company (for compensation, of course) puts its sales force to work stirring up interest in - that is, promoting - the other company’s drug.

Such arrangements are fairly frequent in the pharmaceutical business (less so with devices), so we thought we’d take a look at co-promoter liability – that is, whether there’s any support for the independent liability of the non-manufacturing co-promoter. We’re not looking at the other party’s (the manufacturer’s) liability, since that would be determined primarily by the law of agency as applied in a standard product liability case.