SCOTUS Shields Generic Drug Manufacturers From Liability

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/cranestation/51803/scotus-shields-generic-drug-manufacturers-from-liability

SCOTUS Shields Generic Drug Manufacturers From Liability
by CraneStation | September 26, 2013 - 8:16am

In July of this year, The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued an Orwellian 5-4 opinion that shields generic drug manufacturers from liability for harm caused by generic 'equivalent' drugs. Karen Bartlett, a New Hampshire resident, sued a generic drug manufacturer after the drug caused permanent disability and disfigurement. After Ms. Bartlett emerged from a coma, she endured thirteen surgeries, and remains legally blind. Justice Alito, who authored the majority opinion, called her situation "tragic," but then essentially told her and all others in her life-altering situation to go pound sand.

To put it mildly, this SCOTUS decision is horrendous, because it leaves people like Karen Bartlett and others, who are harmed by generic drugs no recourse whatsoever. As Justice Sotomayor states in her dissent:

If manufacturers of products that require preapproval are given de facto immunity from design-defect liability, then the public will have to rely exclusively on imperfect federal agencies with limited resources and sometimes limited legal authority to recall approved products. And consumers injured by those products will have no recourse.

What Justice Sotomayor is saying in her dissent is that when Congress passed the Food and Drug Act, it meant to protect people; it did not pass a law that says one has no remedy when harmed, by removing any basis for a lawsuit in the state courts.

[nebenaube]

1. Well, no more generic drugs for me... n/t

[elleng]

2. And Sotomayor is also suggesting

that Congress can remedy this wrong.

[Demeter]

3. Yeah, they can impeach the DancingSupremes