Happy birthday, Bob Marley. (We mean the transcendent reggae singer, not the Maine comedian.) Now let's get together and feel alright about another good personal jurisdiction decision, In re Pradaxa, No. CJC-16-004863 (Cal. Super. Ct. Jan. 31, 2019). The case strikes a blow against California litigation tourism. There were some awful decisions out of California on this topic in the past. Call this new decision a redemption song.
A bunch of non-California residents claimed injuries from Pradaxa, and sued a number of corporate defendants associated with the medicine's manufacture and sale. But none of those corporate defendants was incorporated in California, nor did they own, lease, or maintain any property in the Golden State. The defendants challenged personal jurisdiction. The plaintiffs did not even argue that there was general personal jurisdiction over the defendants. The Bauman case thoroughly foreclosed that notion. Instead, the issue was whether the SCOTUS BMS decision left any room for jammin' the out of state defendants into a California court via specific personal jurisdiction.
Remember, the plaintiffs took the medicine outside California. So what bases could the plaintiffs lively up themselves to show that their claims related to or arose out of the defendants' contacts with California? The plaintiffs did what some other plaintiffs have done by exploiting the existence of an in-state clinical trial of the drug. If the mere existence of clinical trials does the trick, then the SCOTUS BMS case is a dead letter for pharma companies, since clinical trials often take place in big (and plaintiff-friendly) states. That would be a crazy baldhead result, given that BMS itself involved a pharma defendant. The Pradaxa court was too smart for that. It looked to the qualitative and quantitative nature of the clinical trial in California, and concluded that, in the grand scheme of things, questions relating to 32 in-state clinical trial sites in one massive clinical trial were "too attenuated to support the exercise of specific jurisdiction." All non-resident Pradaxa plaintiffs were consequently dismissed from the California mass tort for lack of specific personal jurisdiction under BMS. Their exodus is our freedom time.
Since it is a sure thing that forum-shopping plaintiff lawyers will continue to pursue the clinical trial angle, you should pay heed to the factors the California court considered in finding the clinical trial insufficient to establish specific jurisdiction: (1) the forum state was not overrepresented in the trial, and (2) the alleged problems with the trial did not relate to the claimed inadequacies in the warnings. The plaintiffs made much of the fact that there had to be corrections made to label with respect to the adverse event reports out of the California clinical trial, but the "negligible changes in the data" could not support claims. (E.g., the hazard ratio for a life-threatening bleed went from 0.80 to 0.81.). The court was not impressed by the plaintiffs' argument.
But we are impressed by the rigor and clarity of the court's reasoning. If corporate defendants can earn such a good and sensible result in San Francisco, we all have cause for optimism. Hallelujah. Don't worry about a thing. Could you be loved? Every little thing is gonna be alright. And never give up. We offer congratulations, gratitude, and a tip of the cyber hat to Eric Hudson at Butler Snow, who argued and won the motion.
By the way, speaking of congratulations, and speaking of never giving up, today is the birthday of another pop star. In fact, according to an MTV Europe poll in 2008, he is the "Best Act Ever." We won't tell you who he is; you'll have to click on the link at the end. Of course, since we're telling you to click on a link, you might have some idea what awaits you. Feeling dread? Don't. Embrace the wonderful, sheer inanity of the Best Act Ever.
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.
