Edwards v. Basel Pharmaceuticals’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably Thom v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (2003), Mark Eck Sandra Keck Travis Eck Megan Eck v. Parke Davis & Company Warner-Lambert Company the Rugby Group Inc and Rugby Laboratories Inc (2001)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 9 state decisions
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 21 U.S.C. § 360 (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act)
Relies on Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc. · Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr · Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Weintraub · Los Angeles Unified School District v. Los Angeles NAACP · Kirkland v. General Motors Corporation
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Where a product is available only on prescription or through the services of a physician, the physician acts as a “learned intermediary” between the manufacturer or seller and the patient. It is his duty to inform himself of the qualities and characteristics of those products which he prescribes for or administers to or uses on his patients, and to exercise independent judgment, taking into account his knowledge of the patient as well as the product. The patient is expected to and, it can be presumed, does place primary reliance upon that judgment. The physician decides what facts should be told to the patient. Thus, if the product is properly labeled and carries the necessary instructions and warnings to fully apprize the physician of the proper procedures for use and the dangers involved, the manufacturer may reasonably assume that the physician will exercise the informed judgment thereby gained in conjunction with his own independent learning, in the best interest of the patient.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“It is the widely held view that the FDA sets minimum standards for drug manufacturers as to design and warnings. We conclude that compliance with these minimum standards does not necessarily complete the manufacturers duty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The reasoning behind this rule is that the doctor acts as a learned intermediary between the patient and the prescription drug manufacturer by assessing the medical risks in light of the patient's needs.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.