As discussed yesterday by Kurt Karst on the FDA Law Blog, the U.S. Supreme Court has sought the views of the Solicitor General on whether federal law preempts state failure to warn lawsuits against generic drug companies. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit had ruled against federal preemption in Mensing v. Wyeth, Inc. The Solicitor General filed a strongly anti-preemption brief, the Drug and Device Law blog has noted, in a Motor Vehicle Safety Act case to which the Court granted review yesterday, Williams v. Mazda, which is certainly not a good sign for the petitioners in Mensing.
Mensing is among the numerous generic drug preemption cases discussed in a recent WLF Legal Backgrounder, Generic Drugs and Preemption in the Wake of Wyeth v. Levine, written by Kelly Day Savage and Michael F. Healy of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP.