Alabama High Court Again Says Brand-Name Drug Makers Liable In Generic Injury Case

Saturday, August 23, 2014 | Dangerous Drugs & Medical Devices | Author: | Original Article

“The state’s high court issued its 65-page majority opinion Friday. Justice Michael Bolin authored the ruling, joined by justices Lyn Stuart, James Allen Main, Alisa Kelli Wise and Tommy Bryan. Justice Greg Shaw issued a separate concurring opinion, and Chief Justice Roy Moore and justices Tom Parker and Glenn Murdock dissented.

“In the context of inadequate warnings by the brand-name manufacturer placed on a prescription drug manufactured by a generic manufacturer, it is not fundamentally unfair to hold the brand-name manufacturer liable for warnings on a product it did not produce because the manufacturing process is irrelevant to misrepresentation theories based, not on manufacturing defects in the product itself, but on information and warning deficiencies, when those alleged misrepresentations were draftedby the brand-name manufacturer and merely repeated, as allowed by the (Food and Drug Administration), by the generic manufacturer,” Bolin wrote.