The Supreme Court has now finished hearing oral arguments from the defense and plaintiff in Wyeth v. Levine, a case with profound implications for product liability litigation – specifically in the pharmaceutical industry. The decision will also set an important precedent for constitutional law, specifically in the way lower courts will interpret the doctrine of implied preemption in the future.
Derived from the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, the doctrine of Preemption bars individuals injured by a product from filing a civil action in state court if the product complied with federal safety standards. Attorneys practicing in the field of product liability law, especially those who represent individuals injured by dangerous drugs should be closely following this development.
First, some background on the facts and procedural history of the case. The plaintiff, musician Diana Levine, began suffering from migrane headaches and turned to a local health clinic for treatment in April 2000. There, she was prescribed pain medicine as well as Phenergan, a drug manufactured by Wyeth for treating nausea. However, the physician’s assistant who administered the latter drug injected it into one of her arteries, rather than a vein — despite warnings on the drug’s label that doing so could lead to irreversible gangrene.
Tragically, as a result of receiving this negligent care, Levine ended up with gangrene and needed to have one of her arms amputated below the elbow. She filed a civil suit against the clinic and the PA for malpractice and received an undisclosed settlement out of court.
Then, in 2004, a jury in her home state of Vermont found that Phenergan’s label offered insufficient warning about the danger of that injection method compared with two other, safer ways to administer the drug and awarded her $6.7 million from Wyeth. The Vermont Supreme Court upheld the jury’s verdict in 2006.
This is where Levine’s lawsuit becomes enmeshed in the complexities of constitutional law, and why the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. All of this will be fleshed out in a series of posts over the next few days. Stay tuned.
Here is some online reading for further background:
- Les Weisbrod at the HuffingtonPost.com
- Preview of Wyeth v. Levine at SCOTUSwiki
- Dan Slater at the WSJ.com Law Blog
