Ruling Limits ‘Forum Shopping’ in Product Liability Cases
A recent Supreme Court decision could make it harder for large groups of plaintiffs to sue corporations in state courts for damages caused by manufacturers’ products.
Bristol-Myers Squibb prevailed in its effort to get the Supreme Court to limit where patients can seek compensation for harm caused by drugs. The ruling will echo beyond the pharmaceutical industry to potentially affect any liability case in which consumers allege harm caused by a deficient product.
“It will extremely limit the notion that large companies can be sued by anyone, anywhere,” said James Beck, who focuses on pharmaceutical and product liability law at Reed Smith.
The ruling also could limit consumers ability to “forum shop” product liability cases.
Justices ruled 8-1 for the drug company in a case that pitted BMS against the state of California. The case centered around whether plaintiffs residing outside of the state who claim they were harmed by BMS’s blood thinner Plavix could join in a lawsuit brought by California residents against the New York-based company in California.
The out-of-state residents didn’t buy the drug or take it in California, and the product wasn’t manufactured in the state.
“The mere fact that other plaintiffs were prescribed, obtained, and ingested Plavix in California—and allegedly sustained the same injuries as did the non-residents—does not allow the State to assert specific jurisdiction over the nonresidents’ claims,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the court’s opinion.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the effect of today’s opinion will be to curtail—and in some cases eliminate—plaintiff’s ability to hold corporations fully accountable for their nationwide conduct.”
The ruling “hands one more tool to corporate defendants determined to prevent the aggregation of individual claims and forces injured plaintiffs to bear the burden of bringing suit in what will often be far flung jurisdictions,” Sotomayor said.
Source: Politico