US Supreme Court Rejects Wyeth’s Claims
Our Comment:
In a hotly anticipated case, the United States Supreme Court rejected Wyeth’s claims that FDA approval of its device labeling preempted state law claims. (Wyeth v. Levine) In a similar case earlier last year where the Chief Justice had recused himself the court split 4-4. It was anticipated this case would go for Wyeth 5-4, but instead in a 6-3 decision, the court rejected Wyeth’s claims. Both Kennedy sided with the majority and Thomas wrote a concurring opinion adopting the result.
This case does not affect these overtime cases, but it was interesting to note that a major pharmaceutical company was denied attempting to fashion technical legal arguments to avoid liability. In this case no such luck. We hope the 9th Circuit will reject Wyeth’s arguments in these overtime cases as well.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/06-1249.pdf
