Wearable Fitness Tracking Devices
As the use of fitness trackers and other personal monitoring devices becomes more prevalent, an increase in consumer litigation over them is inevitable. Because such devices are still cutting-edge in many respects, the opportunities for unexpected manufacturing and design problems is also high. And because some of the data involved may be highly personal, the risk of privacy breach claims is certainly not zero.
Park Doctrine Prosecutions of Corporate Officers Continue: Stay Alert!
Individual corporate officers of pharmaceutical, medical device, food and related companies can be prosecuted for violations of the United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) under the Park Doctrine. Such prosecutions "tip off" plaintiffs' attorneys to possible areas of product liability litigation to bring against a company.
Sharing Medical Device Mass Tort Actions
A medical device case poses numerous pleading problems. However, before one even reaches the pleading stage, there are major hurdles to consider. The major issue facing the plaintiff's lawyer during client intake is to decide which cases to file immediately and which cases can wait. This depends, of course, on the statute of limitations the lawyer determines will be applicable ' and that is no small task.
The Learned Intermediary Doctrine: Uniformity at Last?
State and federal courts have long faced the difficulty of adapting purchaser-focused product liability doctrines to the pharmaceutical and medical device areas, where physicians mediate the interaction between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer, the patient.The learned intermediary doctrine addresses this dilemma by providing that manufacturers of prescription medicines need warn only physicians of the relevant risks associated with their products.
Mobile Medical Apps and Product Liability
As mobile medical apps become central to medical care, litigation is inevitable. A threshold issue in such litigation is likely to be whether or not a mobile app is, in the first instance, subject to FDA regulation.
Predicting the Tides
It is a fact pattern common to asbestos-related lawsuits: A plaintiff recalls generally working around different products that may or may not have contained asbestos, but cannot pinpoint specific time periods or locations where those products were present and could have exposed the plaintiff to asbestos. Typically, the alleged exposure occurred three or more decades ago, with no potential corroborating documents or witnesses surviving to the present date. This scenario places defendants in the untenable position of defending a claim without access to any information on the products, or the alleged exposure, that will either confirm or deny that the identified products were both present in the plaintiff's workplace and actually contained asbestos.
Information Sharing for the Information Age
As 2015 drew to a close, Congress agreed on a federal budget. That simple act, coming on the heels of a series of contentious continuing resolutions, was big news. But tucked away on page 694 of that 887-page bill was perhaps a more significant achievement. There Congress inserted, passed, and the President signed, the Cybersecurity Act of 2015.
<b><i>Online Extra:</b></i> Home Depot to Pay $13 Million to Settle Consumers' Data Breach Case
The Home Depot will pay $13 million to resolve claims by customers whose personal information was exposed to hackers during a massive data security breach in 2014. The settlement agreement, filed in March in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, would certify a class of Home Depot customers to include all U.S. residents whose personal information was compromised after they used payment cards at self-checkout lanes at U.S. Home Depot stores between April 10, 2014, and Sept.'
