Drug Recall Lawyer Blog

• SCOTUS says that drug-labeling laws that require generic drugs to use the same labels as their name-brand equivalents mean patients taking the generic version of Reglan can't sue over failure to warn.
• Abnormal Use writes about the possible preemption fallout from the FDA's Avastin decision.
• Vitamins recalled for failure to meet standards for child-resistant caps.
• How dangerous is Chantix to the heart?
• This is not exactly a drug, but the FTC has now made sure Nivea can no longer imply in advertisements that one of its skin lotion products will make you skinnier. (HT:Legal Blog Watch.)
• Autism and Zoloft.

This from Abnormal Use:

The sinister suggestion that major corporations have conspired to use the Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case as a tool to promote tort reform is odd, although film maker Susan Saladoff and her pals at The Pop Tort seem to believe that business interests have spent millions in an effort to make the Plaintiff Stella Liebeck the poster plaintiff for tort reform. That’s one of the themes of Saladoff’s Hot Coffee documentary, which we reviewed yesterday. However, there really isn’t any evidence to prove such a corporate scheme, although as always, the absence of evidence of a conspiracy serves to confirm its existence in some eyes.

Sigh.

Well, I see your sigh and I raise you three sighs. I don't know exactly what Abnormal Use is doing here. It is a relative of making up a strawman. But it is not exactly OliverStoneLand to suggest that the tort reform movement funded by corporate America (who else would pay for it?) used a verdict that upset people to their advantage. Why would they engage in such a conspiracy? Because they would be idiots if they didn't. There is nothing "sinister" about it. It would be "tort reform malpractice" not to do so.

I remember a hospital in Rhode Island performed brain surgery on the wrong side of the brain three times in one year a while back (here, I Googled it). If a bunch of trial lawyer lobbyists were not sitting in a dark room somewhere drinking cognac trying to figure out how to exploit that, they should all be fired.

Everyone tries to use facts that support their argument to their advantage. You do this on tort reform, politics, and when arguing if Mays as better than Mantle. It is the way of things, the way of humans.

Continue reading "Abnormal Use and Stella Liebeck" »

With all due respect to Ted Frank, the Drug and Device Law Blog is making a mad run at the all time lead for snarky comments about plaintiffs. I'm a traditionalist; I would like to see a playoff.

Here's the latest open-ended, unexplained jab at plaintiffs made in a comment about a federal judge's ruling in the Kugel hernia mesh cases:

The court rejected defendants’ motion to strike plaintiffs’ experts, who were an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a long-time professor of bioengineering and orthopedic surgery research at the University of Pennsylvania. We don’t see many plaintiffs’ experts with those kinds of credentials, and their credentials and experience appear to have persuaded the court to overlook an otherwise shaky foundation for their testimony.

Really? Where is the evidence/argument you refer to that this federal judge was overwhelmed by the experts' credentials? I'm fine with anyone taking this position - who knows, maybe they are right - but how about offering a fact or two to support your position. If you are unabashedly committed to taking the defense position on every issue, it is a little hard to jump all in based on unsupported analysis.

Continue reading "Funny Line from Drug and Device Law Blog" »

Mark Herrmann, formerly of our archenemy friend The Drug and Device Law Blog is back online again writing for Above the Law from the perspective of in-house counsel. Here is his first post.

I never agree much with Mark but I always enjoyed his writing. His new column for Above the Law is definitely for in-house counsel and defense lawyers. But I'm sure I will read it anyway.

This is something every blog must struggle with. What voice should the blog have? First-person (or the blogger variant--the royal first-person, where everything is about "we" and "us," though the blog is written by one person), or third-person?

Corporations frequently choose a corporate voice, making everything about the corporation. The voice of the blog is often the "voice" of the corporation (corporations are legal entities with rights, of course). But, this can be tough to read sometimes, and still manages to lose the personal flair of a first-person narrative.

So, when my Google Reader blog-feed listed AstraZeneca's recent post, "Connections for Cardiovascular Health," I was interested to see that they are gravitating toward a first-person voice. The side panel shows that the main contributor and "voice" is Earl Whipple, the blog editor and senior director in the AZ corporate communications group. The sidebar mentioned that others would contribute (the CEO had a post on March 23), but perusing the posts, it looks like Earl is the only contributor except for occasional guests.

I think first-person is the way to go, but only if you can actually convey a sense of the personality behind it--I suspect that AstraZeneca will not let loose the reigns, and we will not find out anything interesting about Earl. That's too bad, because personality is probably the largest reason people read blogs (except in my case, where if you spend any time reading my blog, knowing my intense love for all things sci-fi might actually turn you off--comments to the contrary appreciated!).

So how about it, Earl? Tell us about yourself. Maybe even give us some personal viewpoints that deviate from AZ's corporate perspective...

If you are interested in what the Drug Recall Lawyer Blog is up to, there are a number of ways to keep track of us:

• Subscribe to us through your favorite blog reader (I use Google Reader)
• Follow our firm on Twitter: @MillerAndZois
• Follow me on Twitter: @millerandzois
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Our blog posts are automatically patched into our Facebook page and our Miller & Zois Twitter page, so you’ll see updates as soon as they come in.

Of course, we like to return the favor and keep track of the goings-on in the drug and medical device litigation world. If you have a Facebook page, a blog or a Twitter account that we aren’t following, please let me know at ronmiller@millerandzois.com, or feel free to include it in the comments below for all the world to see.

Mark Herrmann, half of the team that cranks out lengthy and well-thought out blogs for the Drug and Device Law blog, is now retiring from that particular job. Read his farewell post here.

No word on whether his partner, Jim Beck, will continue it alone, or will find another co-conspirator. We hope he will continue for selfish reasons--the blog is an invaluable resource and, despite it being wrong most of the time (playfully stated--the Drug Recall Lawyer Blog is on the other side of the aisle, after all), it was always entertaining and enlightening.

At any rate--good luck Mark. We wish you the best.

The Drug Recall Lawyer Blog is a relatively young blog—we first posted on April 28, 2009, and in the past seven months we have put up 130 posts (including this one). Per Google Analytics, the average number of hits to the our blog during the workweek is 135 (which includes weekends, the average is higher if only weekdays are considered); our highest single day score was just last month with 386 hits; and the average reader spends about 1 minute and 2 seconds on our site.

So, we read with interest the announcement of the Third Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100. The ABA Journal selects its favorites, and posts them for all to see. This year, they included the related Twitter sites, where applicable.

In the spirit of the ABA’s article, here’s a list of our top blogs:

NEPOTISM:
Of course, we follow blogs by our co-workers and bosses at Miller & Zois.

• Accident Injury Lawyer Blog
• Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

Additionally, we follow the Maryland Daily Record’s legal blog, Generation JD (which we contribute to). Generation JD features the musings, trials (literally) and tribulations of seven Maryland/Washington D.C. lawyers from disparate firms and backgrounds.

TECHNOLOGY:

• Acrobat for Legal Professionals
• Dennis Kennedy
• Electronic Discovery Blog
• TechnoLawyer Blog

DRUGS & MEDICAL DEVICES:

• Drug and Device Law
  
• Drug Injury Watch
• Drug Recall Information
• Eye on FDA
• FDA Law Blog
• FDA Press Releases and Recalls (through RSS feed, only)
• Mass Tort Defense
• Mass Tort Litigation Blog
• Shearlings Got Plowed

TRIAL PRACTICE:

• Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog
• Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips
• South Carolina Trial Law Blog
• The Art of Advocacy
• Trial Lawyer Tips

OTHER:

• Lawyer Marketing Blog
• Day on Torts
• Evidence in Medicine
• LegalEthics.com
• Maryland Daily Record
• Overlawyered
• Protecting Civil Justice
• Shrager, Spivey & Sachs Blog
• The Pop Tort

NON-LEGAL: (because sometimes you just need to have non-law hobbies):

• XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language
• Alpineberry
• A Whisk and a Spoon
• The Washington Post: Maryland Politics

We have yet to really go through the ABA list, but we’ll check it out and let you know which ones we recommend.

The Drug Recall Lawyer Blog, along with six other high-quality legal blogs, have teamed up to form one Twitter page. The connection between the blogs is that they are all written by members of my firm. Some are national in scope, and some deal with Maryland, specifically. Here's a list of the blogs that automatically link to Twitter through Twitterfeed (this is a great way to stay updated, assuming you do not use Google Reader or some other RSS feed software):

• Accident Injury Lawyer Blog
• Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog
• Drug Recall Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Accident Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Lawyer Blog
• Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

Follow us at @MillerAndZois! And, stay tuned for our FaceBook Fan Page.