- “Report: Government warnings about antidepressants may have led to more suicide attempts” [Washington Post]
- Celebrity doc known for touting diet-health snake oil told off by Senators known for touting socio-economic snake oil [NBC, Business Week]
- Physicians’ prescription of drugs off-label may “seem odd to the uninitiated, but it is called the practice of medicine, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with [it].” [Steven Boranian/D&DLaw, Sidley, Steve McConnell/D&DLaw (False Claims Act angle, with much background on that law generally)]
- “23andMe Closer to FDA Approval” [Matthew Feeney/Cato, earlier]
- FDA guidance could foreclose most use of tweets, Google ads and other character-limited vehicles in pharmaceutical promotion [Jeffrey Wasserstein/FDA Law Blog, Elizabeth N. Brown/Reason]
- Average wholesale price (AWP) litigation: “Pennsylvania High Court Joins Judicial Stampede That’s Trampling State Attorneys-General/Plaintiffs’ Bar Alliances” [WLF, Beck, earlier]
- California infant’s death opens window on lucrative (for some prescribers) intersection of workers’ comp and compounded pharmaceuticals [Southern California Public Radio]
Posts Tagged ‘pharmaceuticals’
Chicago enlists in war on painkillers
“Following in the footsteps of two California counties, the city of Chicago this week filed suit against five pharmaceutical companies, contending that they drove up the city’s costs by overstating the benefits of their addictive painkillers and failing to reveal the downside of taking the drugs.” [ABA Journal, Bloomberg] The city’s press release asserts, among other things: “there is no scientific evidence supporting the long-term use of these drugs [opioids] for non-cancer chronic pain.”
Suits like this are typically, though not invariably, concocted by private law firms which then pitch them to governments hoping for contingency-fee representation deals. (Orange and Santa Clara are the California counties that have signed on to such actions.) For more on the war on painkillers and their marketing, check the ample resources at Reason mag from Jacob Sullum, Brian Doherty, and others; note also a recent book, A Nation in Pain by Judy Foreman, via Tyler Cowen. Our earlier coverage is here.
“How the patent trolls won in Congress”
Sen. Harry Reid seems to have been central:
“We felt really good the last couple of days,” said the tech lobbyist. “It was a good deal—one we could live with. Then the trial lawyers and pharma went to Senator Reid late this morning and said that’s it. Enough with the children playing in the playground—go kill it.”…
Trial lawyers are heavy donors to Democratic politicians, including Reid. … The long history of the divide over other kinds of legal tort reform loomed over the bill, which was dubbed the Innovation Act in the House. The fact that it was the trial lawyers’ lobby that reportedly delivered the death blow suggests that the rift only got wider as debate dragged on.
Key Litigation Lobby allies like Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) spoke out against the legislation on the Senate floor. [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]
Medical roundup
- Academics have underestimated sensitivity of medical system to liability pressures [Michael Frakes, SSRN via TortsProf]
- “Nobody has gone out and bought a new home” — Mark Lanier talks down his verdict knocking $9 billion out of Takeda and Lilly after two hours of deliberation by a Lafayette, La. jury [Reuters] Japanese drugmaker says it had won three previous trials [ABA Journal]
- Nursing home in living-up-to-its-name town of West Babylon sued over hiring male strippers to entertain residents [NYP, more (wife of complainant attended display), ABA Journal]
- “Reining in FDA regulation of mobile health apps” [Nita Farahany, Volokh/WaPo]
- Another setback for plaintiffs as Arkansas tosses $1.2 billion Risperdal marketing case against Johnson & Johnson [AP/Scottsbluff Star-Herald, Eric Alexander/Drug and Device Law, earlier here and here]
- “Spacecraft collision injuring occupant”: docs scratch their heads at new revamp to billing codes [Steven Syre, Boston Globe via Future of Capitalism]
- FDA preclearance, drug litigation: “Most [patients] never know they were harmed, because we never know what we might have had.” [John Stossel]
Medical roundup
- Oscar-winning “Dallas Buyers Club” should please libertarians and FDA reformers [David Boaz/Cato, Jack Hunter/Rare, Kyle Smith/Forbes]
- Don’t assume patent trolls won’t threaten pharma/biotech [Nicholson Price, Bill of Health]
- “Why are patients shut out of the debate over prescription pain medicine?” [Maia Szalawitz]
- A retrospective on the Satanic abuse panic [Richard Noll, courtesy Maggie McNeill] And why you haven’t read it at Psychiatric Times [Gary Greenberg]
- High-profile medical and custody dispute in Massachusetts over teenager Justina Pelletier appears to pit hospital against hospital [Boston Globe (autoplays), CBS Boston, J.D. Tuccille/Reason]
- Actual fertility procedure under FDA consideration doesn’t live up to hype about supposed “three-parent babies” [Nita Farahany]
- Study points to benefits of easing licensing constraints on nurse practitioners [Jeffrey Miron, Cato]
- More: Florida Supreme Court, long elected with support from plaintiff’s bar, invalidates medical malpractice limits [Miami Herald, Alex Stein/Bill of Health]
March 13 roundup
- Claimed prison guard punched him in face: “Man convicted in Chicago-area mass murder awarded $500,000” [WHAS, ABA Journal]
- Ken White “immediately repulsed and enraged” by Mayer-Brown-repped suit seeking removal of Glendale, Calif. “comfort women” memorial [Popehat]
- “Las Vegas: Man Sues Casino After $500k Loss ‘While Drunk'” [Sky News]
- Regulators blame everyone but selves: “Drug Shortages Continue to Vex Doctors” [Sabrina Tavernese, NYT on GAO report, earlier here, here, etc., etc.]
- Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli to speak tomorrow on “dereliction of duty” of AGs who decline to defend laws deemed unconstitutional, hope someone brings up this and this [more background; and his successor Mark Herring’s view]
- Oregon: “Portland State University will pay $161,500 to settle a lawsuit claiming it discriminated against disabled students who have service animals.” [AP/KOIN] Laws make it dangerous for business owners to draw line between legitimate, fake service dogs [L.A. Times]
- Not The Onion: Canada telecoms regulator pushes XX cable channels to run more Canadian content [CBC, National Post]
February 11 roundup
- If you’ve answered a consumer survey about which pharmaceuticals you take, you may be hearing from this guy’s staff [Paul Barrett, Business Week on mass tort “lead generator”]
- Jury awards $9 million to Vancouver, Wash. man imprisoned for 20 years after wrongful child abuse conviction [Insurance Journal; The Columbian/Seattle Times 2009]
- Product liability: jury awards $18 million in fatal fire attributed to altered space heater [Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, outcome subject to confidential agreement]
- $500 million California verdict in competition case between two drug companies [Kyle White, Abnormal Use, Daniel Fisher (Actelion case)]
- Short film tackles city of Detroit’s decline, GM bailout, with commentary from bank economist David Littmann, Todd Zywicki [“Bankrupt”]
- Hardee’s CEO: Easier to open a new restaurant in Shanghai than in Los Angeles [Legal NewsLine]
- Fooled ya! “I intend to reverse” trend of President bypassing Congress to bring power into executive branch, said Obama in 2008 [Tom Rogan/The Week, Jim Powell/Forbes] Constitutional issues of federal contractor minimum wage executive order [Eugene Kontorovich and followup, On Labor, Gene Healy, Peter Kirsanow]
Medical roundup
- Trial lawyer push to weaken MICRA, the medical damages cap, could spark most expensive ballot measure struggle in California history [Legal NewsLine]
- Why the FDA should lay off 23andMe [Robert Green and Nita Farahany, Nature via Volokh, earlier]
- SEIU to West Coast hospitals: play ball with our organizers or we’ll arrange to cap your execs’ pay [Bloomberg]
- Video of panel discussion on new book A Conspiracy Against ObamaCare [Randy Barnett et al., more]
- Louisiana high court throws out $330 million award to state, federal governments over marketing of Risperdal [NOLA.com/Times-Picayune, Eric Alexander/Drug and Device Law]
- “If Obamacare Doesn’t Kill Small Medical Practices, Bureaucratic ICD-10 Coding Requirements Might” [Tuccille]
- FDA goes after antibacterial soap. Wisely? [White Coat]
Product liability roundup
- “Furniture company founder files federal chair-collapse suit against rival manufacturer” [ABA Journal]
- Wrangling over Pennsylvania tobacco settlement aftermath “a never-ending buffet for attorneys” [Allentown Morning Call] Florida $27 million smoking award upheld [Daily Business Review]
- Autonomous cars and tort liability [Kyle Colonna, Case Western RJLTI/SSRN]
- Asbestos: Death of single fiber theory [Sean Wajert, Pa.] Radiologist Herron says he did nothing wrong [W.V. Record]
Peculiar tale of Russian asbestos-mining town [Foreign Policy] More: Lester Brickman on smokers’ asbestos cases [Chamber-backed LNL] - From the defense side, Beck chooses favorite and least-favorite drug and medical-device decisions of 2013;
- One can always hope: Will 3-D printing end product liability litigation as we know it? [Nora Freeman Engstrom, SSRN] “Philadelphia Becomes First City To Ban 3D-Printed Gun Manufacturing” [Zenon Evans] Once again on the vacuous but oft-repeated “NRA is a front for gunmakers” line [Tuccille]
Environmental roundup
- “A Milestone to Celebrate: I Have Closed All My Businesses in Ventura County, California” [Coyote, earlier]
- “Louisiana Judge Ends Katrina Flooding Lawsuits Against Feds” [AP/Insurance Journal]
- “Some shoppers who reuse plastic bags to dispose of animal waste will miss them” [L.A. Times via Alkon]
- Alameda County, Calif. conscripts out-of-state drugmakers into product disposal program: public choice problem, constitutionality problem or both? [Glenn Lammi, WLF]
- “Connecticut, Drunk on Power, Uses Bottle Bill to Steal Money” [Ilya Shapiro]
- “If successful, the New York lawsuits would extend the scope of the [habeas corpus] writ to an undefined array of nonhuman creatures.” [Jim Huffman, Daily Caller]
- Clean Water Act citizen suits never intended to be race to courthouse between officialdom, bounty hunters [Lammi, WLF on Eleventh Circuit ruling]
- Let’s stop measuring congestion, it just makes our environmental plans look bad [Randal O’Toole, David Henderson on California policy]