Fullington v. Pfizer, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
720 F.3d 739 · 2013
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district ·
Relationships
Applies 21 U.S.C. § 355 (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act)
Relies on Ashcroft v. Iqbal · PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing · PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing · 133 S. Ct. 2466 - Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett · Berkeley Pump Co. v. Reed-Joseph Land Co.
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he physician acts as a “learned intermediary” between the manufacturer and the patient and any warning given to the physician is deemed a warning to the patient. The learned intermediary doctrine provides that the failure of a drug manufacturer to provide the physician with an adequate warning of the risks associated with a prescription product is “not the proximate cause of a patient’s injury if the prescribing physician had independent knowledge of the risk that the adequate warnings should have communicated.” Thus, the causal link between a patient’s injury and the alleged failure to warn is broken when the prescribing physician had substantially the same knowledge as an adequate warning from the manufacturer that should have been communicated to him.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“stripped any discretionary authority from the generic manufacturers to ensure the safety of the products or the adequacy of the labels, instead placing the burden entirely on the brand manufacturers. The privileged position accorded to the brand manufacturers may alter their state law relationship to the generic drugs whose composition and labeling they control, since at this point such a manufacturer is the party that actually controls the manufacturing and labeling of the product in question. With the brand manufacturers solely responsible for the content and updating of a generic's labels, it can no longer be credibly argued that communications regarding the risks of [a brand manufacturer’s] product are not also directed at the consumers of generic bioequivalents.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.