Reyes v. Wyeth Laboratories’s Empirical Analysis
498 F.2d 1264 · 1974
Citation profile
137 federal appellate · 26 district · 87 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 347 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2016 · most notably Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. (2008), 117 Ill. 2d 507 - Kirk v. Michael Reese Hospital & Medical Center (1987)
137 federal appellate · 26 district · 87 state decisions — followed in 27 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 262 (Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009)
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · The Boeing Company v. Daniel C. Shipman · Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. · Escola v. Coca Cola Bottling Co. · National Labor Relations Board v. Plasterers' Local Union No. 79
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 347 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Prescription drugs are likely to be complex medicines, esoteric in formula and varied in effect. As a medical expert, the prescribing physician can take into account the propensities of the drug, as well as the susceptibilities of his patient. His is the task of weighing the benefits of any medication against its potential dangers. The choice he makes is an informed one, an individualized medical judgment bottomed on a knowledge of both patient and palliative.”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“k. Unavoidably unsafe products. There are some products which, in the present state of human knowledge, are quite incapable of being made safe for their intended and ordinary use. These are especially common in the field of drugs. An outstanding example is the vaccine for the Pasteur treatment of rabies, which not uncommonly leads to very serious and damaging consequences when it is injected. Since the disease itself invariably leads to a dreadful death, both the marketing and the use of the vaccine are fully justified, notwithstanding the unavoidable high degree of risk which they involve. Such a product, properly prepared, and accompanied by proper directions and warning, is not defective, nor is it unreasonably dangerous. The same is true of many other drugs, vaccines, and the like, many of which for this very reason cannot legally be sold except to physicians, or under the prescription of a physician. It is also true in particular of many new or experimental drugs as to which, because of lack of time and opportunity for sufficient medical experience, there can be no assurance of safety, or perhaps even of purity of ingredients, but such experience as there is justifies the marketing and use of the drug notwithstanding a medically recognizable risk. The seller of such products, again with the qualification that they are properly prepared and marketed, and proper warning is given, where the situation calls for it, is not to be held to strict liability for unfortunate conseq”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]here a consumer, whose injury the manufacturer should have reasonably foreseen, is injured by a product sold without a required warning, a rebuttable presumption will arise that the consumer would have read any warning provided by the manufacturer, and acted so as to minimize the risks. In the absence of evidence rebutting the presumption, a jury finding that the defendant's product was the producing cause [medical causation] of the plaintiff's injury would be sufficient to hold him liable”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.