Justia U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The FTC sued Lundbeck, Inc., alleging that its acquisition of the drug NeoProfen violated the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 41 et seq., the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1-7, the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. 12-27, the Minnesota Antitrust Law of 1971, and unjustly enriched Lundbeck. At issue was whether the district court properly determined that the FTC failed to identify a relevant market where the FTC did not meet its burden of proving that the drugs Indocin IV and Neoprofen were in the same product market. The court held that the district court's finding was not clearly erroneous and affirmed the judgment.

This case arose when appellant alleged claims of tortuous interference with contract or business expectancy and violation of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (ADTPA), Ark. Code Ann. 4-88-101, et seq. Appellant subsequently sought a temporary retraining order and preliminary injunction after appellee terminated appellant's patient privileges at a residential nursing home. The court held that appellant did not meet the factors in the Dataphase Syst. Inc. v. C.L. Syst., which evaluated whether to issue an injunction. Consequently, the court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for a preliminary injunction and the judgment was affirmed.

This case arose when Pauline Thomas brought her daughter, Jane Doe and four of her grandchildren, including John Doe and R.N.T. to the Emergency Room at the Hennepin County Medical Center and reported her concerns that Jane Doe might have been sexually abused by R.N.T. Appellants brought suit against appellees claiming that the 72-hour hold placed on John Doe, the internal examination of Jane Doe, and the examination of John Doe violated the children's rights under the Fourth Amendment and that the seizure and search of both children violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of all appellants. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of appellees and denied appellants' motion for partial summary judgment on their claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The court rejected appellants' contention that appellees failed to move for summary judgment on all of appellants' claims; that the district court ignored questions of material fact; and that the district court at times used the wrong legal standards when analyzing the facts. The court also held that because it affirmed the district court's adverse grant of summary judgment against appellants, the court did not reach the denial of appellants' partial motion for summary judgment.

Wife, suing on behalf of her deceased husband, (plaintiff) filed tort claims and a breach of warranty claim against pharmaceutical companies, alleging that the prescription Mirapex that husband used to treat his Parkinson's disease lead him to compulsively gamble. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment to defendants because plaintiff's claims were time-barred. The court held that the district court correctly determined that plaintiff's claim accrued more than two years before he brought his suit and thus was time-barred. The court also held that because husband became aware of the effect of the Mirapex more than two years before he filed suit, the continuing tort doctrine did not save his claim; that the open courts provision did not operate to save plaintiff's claim; that the district court did not err in determining that the facts were sufficiently developed to establish a concrete injury in 2006 for the purpose of determining ripeness; that the affidavits at issue did not raise a genuine issue of fact as to whether husband's behavioral problems and side effects were so severe as to render him legally incompetent and therefore, the tolling provisions of section 16.0001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code were unavailable; and that plaintiff had not satisfied the requirement that purchasers gave notice of a breach of warranty claim prior to filing suit and therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to defendant on that claim. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

Plaintiff brought this suit under ERISA, 29 U.S.C. 1001-1461, and the FMLA, 29 U.S.C. 2601-2654, against the state, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS), and two officials of the DAS. At issue was whether the district court properly granted defendants' motions to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the Eleventh Amendment barred plaintiff's FMLA claims against all of the defendants. The court held that the state's waiver of its state court immunity in FMLA cases had no bearing on the state's immunity from suit in federal court. Therefore, the state had not waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity and summary judgment was affirmed.

Plaintiff and his wife brought an action under Minnesota law against defendant claiming that he had negligently failed to inform plaintiff that a risk of permanent blindness accompanied the spine surgery procedure that left plaintiff completely blind in both eyes. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion when it determined that plaintiff's expert was not qualified to provide expert testimony for the purpose of satisfying Min. Stat. 145.682 and, even if the district court did not err as to that issue, whether the district court erred in granting summary judgment under the statute because it did not need expert testimony to establish a prima facie case. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by concluding that the expert had no basis in his own experience for offering any expert opinion concerning what defendant should have known or done and that the expert's attempted reliance on sources of information outside his own knowledge and experience failed to cure this lack of expert witness competency. The court also held that there was nothing that defendant knew or should have known about plaintiff to indicate that either a reasonable person in plaintiff's position or plaintiff himself would have a greater concern about the risk that he faced than an ordinary person would. Therefore, the court held that the district court did not err when it failed to conclude that defendant had a duty to disclose the risk of permanent blindness on that basis. Accordingly, summary judgment was affirmed.

Monarch Fire Protection District of St. Louis County (Monarch) appealed several adverse rulings in favor of Freedom Consulting & Auditing Services, Inc. (Freedom), Freedom's owner, and a Freedom employee. The International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 (Firefighters Union), representing Monarch employees, requested an independent audit of Monarch's self-funded group health plan because union representatives believed that Monarch's board of directors had illegally approved a non-covered medical procedure for a plan member. Monarch hired Freedom to conduct the audit and Monarch subsequently sued Freedom, alleging that protected health information (PHI) had been improperly disclosed to Firefighters Union attorneys in violation of the Business Associate Agreement (BIA) between Monarch and Firefighters Union. Monarch subsequently appealed the district court's dismissal of its conversion claim and underlying claim for punitive damages, the district court's decision that the BAA's indemnity clause did not entitle Monarch to attorneys' fees and costs, and that the district court's denial of its motion for sanctions. The court held that Monarch could not show that Freedom deprived it of the right to possession, which it must do to establish conversion under Missouri law. The court also held that Freedom was not contractually obligated to pay the attorneys' fees and costs that Monarch incurred in the litigation and that Monarch could not survive summary judgment on its claim that the indemnity clause entitled it to attorneys' fees. The court further held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to impose a sanction on the Freedom employee when the case did not proceed to trial because nothing in the record suggested that the district court based its ruling on a legal error or a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Plaintiff, the personal representative of the estate of Velda Smith, sued defendants for medical malpractice, claiming that defendants negligently failed to transfer Smith to a medical facility where she could have received tissue plasminogen activator("tPA") to treat her stroke. At issue was whether the district court properly excluded evidence of plaintiff's medical expert's testimony and granted summary judgment in favor of defendants. The court affirmed summary judgment and held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the expert's testimony pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 where the testimony was predicated on a methodologically flawed and unreliable published medical study ("Zivin Paper").