…s of the drug, an antibiotic. Levaquin included a warning but sometime after Schedin’s incident, the warning was changed and made more prominent (made into a “black box” warning in 2008).  Subsequent warning label changes would be a classic “subsequent remedial measure” inadmissible at trial if it were not for the fact that the label change was mandated by the FDA, U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim has held. … Continue reading →

The interesting fact pattern that gives rise to the problem in this case is what are the duties of a generic drug manufacturer if, after a drug’s initial federal approval (and approval (and then mandated use) of a specific warning label), new information comes to light about potentially harmful side effects?  Can a claim be brought against the manufacturer under state law for failure to warn? Gloria Mensing took a medicine, MCP, a gene… Continue reading →

…njection regimen for a treasured oak or multiple oaks on your property to prevent oak wilt disease, only to have your tree die from oak wilt notwithstanding the hundreds of dollars (or more) spent on flare root injection? One label on branded propiconazole says,  “Preventive application is more effective than therapeutic treatment.”  Some companies that “administer” the flare root injections do so with a guaranty or warran… Continue reading →

…rm or illness? As a first line of defense, pharmaceuticals and device manufacturers seek protection under federal regulation but there are ways for such manufacturers to game that system (by promoting, for example, “off label” uses or, theoretically, by duping federal regulators by other means (i.e., concealing or distorting data as to efficacy or side effects)). So the FDA may afford medical companies some protection, but that protec… Continue reading →

…n that would have negatively affected levofloxacin sales in both Europe and the United States.  Over the past decade, there appears to have been increased concern about these medications and the communication of risk on their labels.  The label warnings have been increasingly emphatic.  Plaintiffs’ theories seem to be, in a nutshell, that the drug companies knew of the medicine’s risks and have steadfastly tried to understate or de-em… Continue reading →

Were you sold a flare root injection regimen for a treasured oak or multiple oaks on your property to prevent oak wilt disease, only to have your tree die from oak wilt notwithstanding the hundreds of dollars (or more) spent on flare root injection? One label on branded propiconazole says,  “Preventive application is more effective than therapeutic treatment.”  Some companies that “administer” the flare root injections d… Continue reading →

…; Bruno and she and her family lost the case on that basis. In a published decision reviewing various states’ analyses of “provocation analysis” in dog-bite cases, the Minnesota Court of Appeals (Kalitowski, Wright, Bjorkman, in an opinion by Kalitowski) reversed the district court on the jury instruction as to what constitutes “provocation” under the Minnesota dog-bite statute. However, the Minnesota Court of Appeal… Continue reading →

From time to time, our legal system produces dull business cases whose only allure is that they seem convoluted to the point of being almost comic. For example, in Elsenpeter v. St. Michael Mall, a Wright County case (Judge Dale E. Mossey) recently decided by the Minnesota Court of Appeals (Schellhas, Hudson, Ross), plaintiff Tenant brought a lawsuit to compel an arbitration where the contract the defendant Landlord drafted provided for…a… Continue reading →

… lawsuit ever got to trial and gave his case a lethal nip.  Defendant builders won summary judgment at the trial court.  The case was revived by the Minnesota Supreme Court earlier this month, after Miller had lost before the Wright County District Court and the intermediate Minnesota Court of Appeals.(Previous Minnesota Litigator coverage of the Miller v Lankow et al. case here.) The Minnesota Supreme Court decision, reversing summary judgment t… Continue reading →

…iocese of New Ulm on behalf of alleged abuse victims.  And the Court went on to rule that no such obligation had been alleged, affirming summary judgment in favor of the Diocese. The Minnesota Court of Appeals (Judges Larkin, Wright, and Peterson, in an opinion by Larkin) refused to go as far as the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a similar case. While clearly sympathetic to plaintiffs’ claims, the Court concluded that any remedy the plaintiffs … Continue reading →

…ao to get a default judgment against the night club for over $100,000.  The gambit did not pay off.   In an unpublished decision written by Judge Louis Dovre Bjorkman of the Minnesota Court of Appeals (for a panel: Halbrooks, Wright, Bjorkman), the court held that the trial court (Hennepin County District Court Judge Tanya Bransford) did not abuse her discretion in refusing to vacate the default judgment against Karma.  Karma had suggested that i… Continue reading →

R.J. Swenson, owner of a farm in Fifty Lakes, Minnesota, found a dead bear on his property in November, 2007.  Swenson, a hunter, was interested in getting the bear’s head stuffed by a taxidermist but also wanted to be sure that this would not violate rules of Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, so he had his lawyer contact the DNR about his dead bear.   The DNR confiscated the dead bear based on its position that the dead b… Continue reading →