For the first time in nearly 40 years, an asbestos case was tried to verdict in Rhode Island. This case, The Estate of Bonnie Bonito, resulted in a full defense verdict!...more
Life insurers operating in California can breathe a little easier this morning. Since 2021, life insurers have been facing a wave of class action lawsuits and potentially crushing liability based on alleged violations of...more
Foley Hoag LLP publishes this quarterly Update primarily concerning developments in product liability and related law from federal and state courts applicable to Massachusetts, but also featuring selected developments for New...more
In Himes v. Somatics, LLC, No. S273887, 2024 WL 3059637 (Cal. June 20, 2024), the Supreme Court of California delivered a win to the defense, upholding the learned intermediary doctrine in cases involving prescription drugs...more
As we ring in the new year, it is time once again to reflect on some of the most significant legal developments for drug and device companies this year. The list below is by no means exhaustive (who could forget the Rule 702...more
How demanding is the causation standard in a California failure to warn claim when a learned intermediary testifies that he would have read and incorporated more stringent warnings if they had been available? Is the plaintiff...more
Early last year, the In re: Incretin-Based Therapies MDL court held that the plaintiffs’ warnings claims were preempted, excluded plaintiffs’ general causation experts, and granted summary judgment to all defendants on dual...more
Massachusetts federal and state courts issued several important product liability decisions in 2021. Nutter’s Product Liability practice group reviewed these cases and report on their significant holdings as follows...more
Does the learned intermediary doctrine apply in the context of a clinical trial? According to the Southern District of Texas, it does. The case in question is Butler et al. v. Juno Therapeutics, Inc., a tragic case...more
The nature of advocacy makes it hard sometimes for lawyers to focus solely on the outcome and the bottom line result. How a court gets there may not matter much to the prevailing party in the dispute as they celebrate the...more
The first appellate shoe has dropped in the litigation involving the herbicide Roundup, Johnson v. Monsanto Co., decided July 20, 2020, by California’s 1st District Court of Appeal, Division One. We discussed the verdict and...more
Massachusetts state and federal courts issued a number of important product liability decisions in 2019. The Product Liability practice group at Nutter recently reviewed these cases. Highlighted below are some of the key...more
To prepare the best product liability defense for pharmaceuticals and medical devices as well as anticipate and strategically plan for future challenges in the medical and life sciences legal world, it is often helpful to...more
Welcome to California! California is a great place to live and work, and we are fortunate to call it home. But there is no sugarcoating the fact that California presents unique and daunting challenges to product...more
Like the rest of the manufacturing world, cannabis Industry participants are beginning to face product liability risk following the legalization of marijuana. Last week, three sons of a woman killed by their father during an...more
Massachusetts Federal Court Holds Proof of Testing of Proposed Alternative Design Not Required in Design Defect Claim, Evidence Plaintiff Ignored Defendant’s Warnings Did Not Establish He Was Sole Proximate Cause of Injury on...more