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

Plaintiff filed suit against Wyeth, alleging that she developed breast cancer after using Wyeth's's hormone therapy medication, Prempro. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the case to the the Eastern District of Arkansas as part of the ongoing In re Prempro Products Liability Litigation. After the district court subsequently dismissed plaintiff's case for failure to respond to discovery orders, her attorney filed a Rule 60(b)(1) motion to set aside the dismissal. Plaintiff's attorney had failed to register for the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM-ECF) system and, consequently, did not receive electronic notices of the filings in plaintiff's case. The court affirmed the district court's denial of the Rule 60(b)(1) motion because the district court did not abuse its discretion where, on more than one occasion, the district court instructed all attorneys to register for the CM-ECF system and warned that those who did not would not receive electronic filing notices or hard copies of orders.View "Freeman v. Wyeth, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff and her kids filed a wrongful death action in state court against R.J. Reynolds and others after her husband died from throat cancer. Defendants removed to federal court, arguing that both of the nonmanufacturers had been fraudulently joined. The district court then granted defendants' motion to dismiss because the family's claims were barred by res judicata. The court concluded that the district court did not err in finding fraudulent joinder, denying plaintiff's motion for remand, and then dismissing the nonmanufacturers from the case. The court also concluded that the "one recovery" rule of Missouri Revised Statutes 537.080 barred recovery against defendants in plaintiff's earlier suit for a wrongful death caused by the same conduct. Therefore, the district court was correct in dismissing the claims against the manufacturing defendants under the more demanding of the dismissal standards. As a result of the prior judgment, the husband no longer had a viable claim against the cigarette manufacturers at the time of his death, and his family is barred from bringing such a claim now. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Thompson, et al. v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff and her husband brought a products liability action against the Little Giant Ladder's manufacturer after she suffered injuries while using the ladder. The district court excluded plaintiff's expert testimony and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove the various theories of products liability. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's grant of summary judgment to the manufacturer. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding evidence of the compression tests on the grounds the tests were not conducted under conditions substantially similar to those surrounding the accident. Furthermore, because plaintiff had no admissible expert testimony to support her theories of product liability, the court concluded that the district court did not err in granting the manufacturer's motion for summary judgment. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Loomis, et al. v. Wing Enterprises, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, guardian ad litem for minor H.T.P., appealed the district court's adverse grant of summary judgment in this products liability case. Plaintiff alleged that Enfamil, an infant formula, was defective or unreasonably dangerous due to C.sak contamination. On appeal, plaintiff argued that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to allow its experts' testimony under Rule 702. The court concluded that the district court abused its discretion in excluding plaintiff's experts where the methodology employed by the experts was scientifically valid, could properly be applied to the facts of the case and was therefore reliable enough to assist the trier of fact. With the expert testimony proposed, plaintiff has created an issue of fact for a jury on the issue of the specific cause of H.T.P.'s C. sak infection and plaintiff was entitled to attempt to prove his claim for products liability under Minnesota law. Accordingly, the court reversed the orders of the district court excluding the testimony of plaintiff's experts, and granting summary judgment and costs in favor of Mead, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Johnson v. Mead Johnson & Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a negligence and strict products liability suit against Stryker, the manufacturer and seller of the pain pump that was inserted into her shoulder to mitigate her pain while recovering from surgery. Plaintiff's husband filed a claim for loss of consortium. The court concluded that Stryker could not have foreseen the potential for articular cartilage damage as the result of the surgical implementation of its pain pump on the medical community's knowledge in 2002; Stryker, as a matter of law, had no duty to protect or warn plaintiff of the harm that Stryker's pain pumps may inflict; and the FDA denials did not indicate to Stryker that use of its pain pumps in intra-articular spaces was unsafe or could result in foreseeable harm. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Stryker. View "Mack, et al. v. Stryker Corp., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the city and several police officers after her son was shot in the chest with an electronic control device (ECD). After the case settled, plaintiff filed suit against TASER for products liability and negligence. The court concluded that plaintiff's failure to warn claim failed as a matter of law because she did not establish on the record that an additional warning would have changed the behavior of the officers involved; the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding plaintiff's expert's testimony on the issue of whether a different or additional warning would have altered the officer's actions under the existing circumstances; even if the court were to conclude that there was a legitimate jury question as to whether the officer had been made aware of the specific risk of cardiac danger when the ECD was fired directly at the subject's chest, such a conclusion would be rebuttable by undisputed evidence in the record that he had not been instructed on available warnings and did not heed the limited training he had received; there was no genuine dispute on the record that the officer would not have read any additional warning TASER may have added as to the cardiac danger of the ECD in any of its product warnings or bulletins, or in any training materials prepared after January 1, 2005; even if an adequate warning had appeared, the officer would not have heeded it; and therefore, TASER was entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's negligence and failure to warn claims where she failed to establish that an additional warning would have altered the behavior of the officer. The court also concluded that plaintiff failed to present evidence that the ECD device used by the officer was unreasonably dangerous as designed. Plaintiff's design defect claim failed as a matter of law where plaintiff failed to demonstrate any "specific design choices" that rendered the model unreasonably dangerous. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment and dismissed plaintiff's remaining claims as moot. View "Bachtel v. TASER Int'l, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, after being diagnosed with tardive dyskinesia (TD), filed suit against Lilly, manufacturer of the antipsychotic drug, Zyprexa, alleging personal injury and product liability claims. The district court concluded that Lilly adequately warned plaintiff's treating and prescribing physicians of the risk of developing movement disorders like TD. On appeal, plaintiff argued, inter alia, that the district court erred in excluding his expert opinion testimony that 15% of Zyprexa users will develop TD after three years of use. The court concluded that the district court was well within its substantial discretion to conclude that plaintiff had not provided sufficient scientific support for the opinion and to exclude the opinion. The court also concluded that the district court properly applied the learned intermediary doctrine in dismissing the failure-to-warn claim. Finally, assuming Arkansas law recognized an overpromotion exception, the exception would not apply in this case because plaintiff presented no evidence that any representation by a salesperson affected a prescribing doctor's decision to continue plaintiff on Zyprexa and because there was no reliable evidence that Zyprexa had significantly more risk of movement disorders than the drug reps allegedly said it had. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's complaint. View "Boehm v. Eli Lilly & Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Novartis alleging that Novartis negligently failed to provide adequate warnings for two drugs she took, Aredia and Zometa, after having two of her teeth extracted. Plaintiff developed osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) after the extraction. Plaintiff was awarded $225,000 in compensatory damages and Novartis appealed. The court concluded that a jury could reasonably find that plaintiff's injury was the natural and probable consequence of Novartis's behavior and rejected Novartis's arguement that plaintiff did not establish that her injuries were proximately caused by inadequate warnings; the district court did not err in applying Missouri law where Missouri had the most significant relationship to the punitive damages claim; and Novartis correctly reasoned that the MedWatch checkmarks were inadmissible hearsay, out-of-court assertions offered for their truth but Novartis failed to demonstrate the prejudice required for a new trial. The court concluded, however, that the district court abused its discretion in awarding plaintiff full costs for depositions conducted as part of multi-district litigation. Accordingly, the court affirmed in Case No. 12-3121 and vacated in Case No. 12-3409. View "Winter v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp." on Justia Law

OMJP appealed from the district court's denial of its motion for relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(2) and (3). In Levaquin I, the court upheld a jury award in compensatory damages against OMJP for Achilles tendon injuries plaintiff suffered while taking OMJP's prescription antibiotic Levaquin. In this appeal, OMJP contended that the district court abused its discretion in denying OMJP relief under Rule (60)(b)(2) based on the delinquent and belated disclosure of an expert's calculation regarding the relative risk of Achilles tendon rupture to certain patients. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying relief based on OMJP's claim of "newly discovered evidence" where the evidence was merely cumulative or impeaching and OMJP had not demonstrated that it was probable it would produce a different result. In regards to OMJP's misconduct claim under Rule 60(b)(3), the court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the lack of the expert's calculation did not prevent OMJP from mounting a vigorous defense and that any misconduct did not warrant a new trial. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Schedin v. Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals" on Justia Law

This case arose when groups of plaintiffs filed product liability actions against four manufacturers of transvaginal mesh devices, including Boston Scientific. Three groups filed similar motions proposing that the state court assign each group to a single Judge for purposes of discovery and trial. Two district judges granted plaintiffs' motions and remanded to state court on the ground that no case included more than 100 plaintiffs and plaintiffs had not proposed to the state court that the actions be tried jointly. The court granted Boston Scientific leave to appeal and vacated the order remanding to state court where the three groups of plaintiffs have already proposed to try their cases jointly within the meaning of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA), 28 U.S.C. 1332(d)(11)(B)(i), because plaintiffs' counsel urged the state court to assign the claims of more than 100 plaintiffs to a single judge. View "Atwell, et al. v. Boston Scientific Corp." on Justia Law