Wyeth ruling seen as win for consumers.

The Toledo Blade (3/25) editorialized, "Consumers have been handed an important victory by the U.S. Supreme Court in the form of a 6-3 decision in a case in which the high court dismissed the argument of drug makers and the Bush administration that federal approval of drugs shields them from lawsuits by injured patients." The Blade concluded, "The high court didn't buy the" Bush "administration's view that the policy constituted federal law, noting that Congress has passed laws regulating drugs for a century without prohibiting consumers from suing drug makers. And if the threat of lawsuits is the incentive to better scrutinize all drugs in development as well as existing drugs, so much the better."

Seroquel study exposed, drug risks kept secret.

In an story that appears on its front page, the Washington Post (3/18, A1, Vedantam) reports, "The study would come to be called 'cursed,' but it started out just as Study 15" which "was a long-term trial of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel." Recently exposed "documents show" that "Study 15 suffered the same fate as many industry-sponsored trials that yield data drugmakers don't like: It got buried" and "it took eight years before a taxpayer-funded study rediscovered what Study 15 had found -- and raised serious concerns about an entire new class of expensive drugs." The study's findings "were never published" or distributed to physicians, and marketing campaigns were developed based on "less rigorous studies" that yielded "positive results." The FDA received the results of the study but "the agency has strenuously maintained that it does not have the authority to place such studies in the public domain." Only through lawsuits have the "details of Study 15...emerged."

California proposes campaign reforms for judges.

The National Law Journal (3/16, MacLean) reports, "Proposed reforms to ethical and campaign requirements for California's judiciary would for the first time require trial judges to disqualify themselves in cases in which they received $1,500 or more in campaign donations from either side" and "in a second major change, lawyers challenging sitting judges for election would be evaluated using the same evaluation system that the Judicial Nominations and Evaluations Commission uses for appointed judges." William McLaughlin, chairman of judicial campaign finance task force, "referring to the West Virginia case" said that "there are indications elsewhere that caused us to think that, to maintain the trust and confidence of the public, we need not only to honor [the canons] but also establish a rule to require recusal." He added, "The $1,500 donation limit was selected because that is already the amount set by law for recusal if a judge owns stock in a company with a matter before him or her."

Families awarded $150 million from Exxon oil spill in Maryland.

The AP (3/13, Nuckols) reports, "A jury awarded about $150 million to 91 families Thursday who sued Exxon Mobil over wells contaminated by a gasoline leak north of Baltimore." A leak in "an underground storage tank bled about 26,000 gallons of gasoline over 37 days in Jacksonville." The company had already "paid a $4 million settlement to the state – the largest civil penalty ever levied by the Maryland Department of the Environment."

Expert witness testifies in Libby trial.

The AP (3/11) reports that Dr. Aubrey Miller, "a medical expert testifying Tuesday in the W.R. Grace trial described his disbelief when, arriving in Libby 10 years ago, he found that people who had never worked at Grace's vermiculite mine were dying from asbestos-related disease." He said, "To see an individual who had died of asbestos-related disease who was not a worker was unheard of." He added, "I had never seen a case or heard of a case like that." The doctor "testified about a range of product tests that Grace officials used to assess the hazards of Libby vermiculite." He said, "Among its findings, Grace learned that the vermiculite had a high tendency to release asbestos fibers into the air."

Widow wins $4 million in medical malpractice case.

The Legal Intelligencer (3/10, Needles) reported, "The wife of a man who died after his doctor allegedly failed to diagnose and treat him for heart disease has been awarded $4 million by a Berks County jury." The jury deliberated for nearly five hours at the close of an eleven day trial and "found Dr. Donald J. McBryan Jr. and his group, Berks Internal Medicine, negligent in the death of Gregory S. Volutza."

Wyeth seen as "body blow" to Bush administration efforts of pre-emption.

The Legal Times (3/9, Mauro) reported, "Last week's decisive Supreme Court ruling against Wyeth in a landmark pharmaceutical product liability case may also close off a major front in a hard-fought battle by businesses and the Bush administration to insulate national corporations from state tort litigation." Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, saying, "Wyeth has not persuaded us that failure-to-warn claims like Levine's obstruct the federal regulation of drug labeling." He added that "until recent years, the Food and Drug Administration viewed state litigation as complementary to its regulations." David Vladeck, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, said that "the ruling represents 'a real body blow to the Bush administration's efforts to change tort law through implied pre-emption.'"
Congress should extend protections to patients harmed by medical devices, paper says. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (3/9) editorialized, "Americans who are injured by prescription drugs won an important protection last week: the right to sue for damages in state courts." The Dispatch said, "Tragically, last year the Supreme Court failed to extend the same protection to patients injured by defective medical devices such as replacement hip and knee joints." Concluding, the Dispatch wrote, "It's not realistic to expect the FDA, with a few hundred employees monitoring more than 11,000 drugs and medical devices, to be able to spot every safety problem before a product gets to market" and that "Congress should give people harmed by defective devices the same protections the Court has now given those harmed by dangerous drugs."