A Supreme Court decision issued
last week is already making it harder for large groups of plaintiffs to sue
corporations in state courts for damages caused by manufacturers' products.
This is just another win for the ‘tort reformers’ in their pursuit to limit
access to justice.
Bristol-Myers Squibb (“BMS”)
prevailed in its effort to get the Supreme Court to limit where patients can sue
for harm caused by drugs. Justices ruled 8-1 for the drug company. The case centered around whether plaintiffs
residing outside of the state who claim they were harmed by BMS'
blood thinner Plavix could join in a lawsuit brought by California residents
against the New York-based company in California. The out-of-state residents
didn't buy the drug or take it in California, and the product wasn't
manufactured in the state.
Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion, stating that, "The mere fact that other plaintiffs were
prescribed, obtained, and ingested Plavix in California — and allegedly
sustained the same injuries as did the non-residents — does not allow the State
to assert specific jurisdiction over the nonresidents' claims."
The main legal issue was whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue in
California state court.
This ruling will affect
many other state courts. For example, a large majority, nearly 95 percent, of the mass torts filed
in Philadelphia are submitted by out-of-state plaintiffs. Under the Supreme
Court BMS decision, plaintiffs could not file these suits in Pennsylvania
unless the company was based in that state.
The lone dissenter, Justice
Sotomayor, realized the real importance of the majority's opinion. She wrote,
"The
effect of today’s opinion will be to curtail — and in some cases eliminate — plaintiff's
ability to hold corporations fully accountable for their nationwide conduct."
She went on to opine that the ruling "hands one more tool to corporate
defendants determined to prevent the aggregation of individual claims and
forces injured plaintiffs to bear the burden of bringing suit in what will
often be far flung jurisdictions."
The opinion is already
having drastic outcomes for other cases. A Missouri court set to oversee the
seventh day of a multi-plaintiff talcum powder trial granted Johnson &
Johnson's motion for a mistrial, which was brought in light of the BMS
decision. Johnson & Johnson is also expected to use the BMS decision in
their appeal of several large verdicts against them over their baby powder
product.
