Law professor comments on court ruling

An article in the Sept. 15 Los Angeles Times about a court ruling that could drastically change consumers' ability to file lawsuits against drug manufacturers included comments from professor Gary Marchant.

In "Legal fight over drug liability law," science writer Jill U. Adams reported that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling is expected in the case, Wyeth v. Levine, this fall. The case is based on an argument used in a vast majority of lawsuits involving prescription drugs - that the drug company failed to adequately warn about a known risk of its product.

Wyeth has argued that the adequacy of warnings on labels of FDA-approved drugs is an issue for FDA experts to decide, not juries.

"If you take the most likely cause of action away, the calculations for the plaintiffs' lawyer become much more dire," said Marchant, executive director of the College of Law's Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology. "It will change the dynamics of which cases are brought. Only the much stronger, the real sure-win kind of cases will be brought. The iffy ones will become financially unviable."