Drug Plaintiffs Can’t Avoid Learned Intermediaries

 
October 14, 2016

Sometimes we take routine things for granted. We don’t appreciate the taste of our morning coffee, it’s just always there. We don’t appreciate the softness of our favorite college sweatshirt, it’s just always been that way. We don’t appreciate that while watching an episode of The Walking Dead and seeing a familiar face we can IMDB and find out we recognize the actor from a 3-episode storyline on Law & Order from the late 1990s. That last one hasn’t always been available, but it’s getting harder to recall what it was like to not have that answer until it woke you from a sound sleep at three in the morning.

In the legal world we take things for granted too. We talk about things like breach, duty, causation and preemption so routinely that we do start to gloss over them a bit. TwIqbal, Daubert, Buckman. Routine, routine, routine.

And for sure, learned intermediary fits into this category of things we know about, we like, but maybe take a bit for granted. For many of us, it’s been part of drug and device law our whole careers given that the term was first coined in 1966 by the Eighth Circuit in Sterling Drug Inc. v. Cornish, 370 F.2d 82, 85 (8th Cir. 1966). So sometimes, it’s good to be reminded just how important it is. 

Read "Drug Plaintiffs Can’t Avoid Learned Intermediaries."

 

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