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Robert Johnston Speaks on Preemption in Drug Product Liability at WLF Webinar

event | May 6, 2021

The webinar, Preemption in Drug Product Liability: The Latest on “Changes Being Effected” and the Impact of Albrecht, was hosted by Washington Legal Foundation.

As noted by WLF, [t]he Supreme Court’s May 2019 Merck v. Albrecht decision clarified that judges, not juries, should analyze a prescription drug maker’s federal preemption defense in failure-to-warn suits.  Under Albrecht, courts must decide whether companies could unilaterally add a warning under federal labeling rules.

At the webinar, Robert and fellow panelists examined recent court decisions implicating warnings and preemption, among them Janssen Pharm. v. A.Y., a state court decision that the company appealed to the Supreme Court.