Product Liability & Mass Torts Digest

In Colwell, the plaintiff was injured when a Sig Sauer P320 handgun allegedly discharged unintentionally into his thigh.  The P320 “functions as a single-action pistol,” and while it has internal safeties “designed to prevent inadvertent discharges,” it lacks external safeties, such as a manual thumb safety or tabbed trigger safety.

The California Supreme Court has recognized a new path for plaintiffs to prove causation in failure-to-warn cases against manufacturers of prescription drugs and medical devices. Under the learned intermediary doctrine, such manufacturers have a duty to warn physicians of the risks associated with their products but do not have a duty to warn patients.

A Bradford Hill analysis—a set of criteria first proposed by the British epidemiologist Sir Austin Bradford Hill in 1965 to evaluate the strength of evidence for a causal relationship between two variables[1]—often plays a critical role in causation opinions of plaintiff experts in product liability matters. 

A recent and thorough opinion in In re Acetaminophen – ASD-ADHD Products Liability Litigation reaffirms the need for parties’ general causation experts to meaningfully engage with known confounding factors to ensure the admissibility of their opinions.