Friday, January 27, 2012

The State-of-the-Art Conte Defense

Because of Dechert's involvement in Reglan litigation, we can't say as much as we'd like to (or used to) about so-called "Conte" liability - that is theories by which plaintiffs who only took generic drugs attempt to impose liability on the manufacturer of a branded bioequivalent that they neither bought nor consumed.  As we mentioned previously, that issue is currently pending in the Alabama Supreme Court in Wyeth v. Weeks, its first appearance in a state high court.

We're willing to bet that the defense briefing in Weeks represents the current state of the art in defending/arguing against Conte-style liability.  For the benefit of everyone out there who is arguing against Conte, we're therefore providing four publicly filed briefs from the Weeks case:  those filed by defendant/appellant Wyeth (be patient, this one takes a while to download), amicus Product Liability Advisory Council, amicus Defense Research Institute, and amicus Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America.

Thanks to Kevin Newsom at Bradley Arent for the Wyeth brief, to Chilton Varner, at King & Spalding for the PLAC brief, and to Paul Schmidt and Mike Imbroscio at Covington & Burling for the PhRMA brief.  We grabbed the DRI brief from its website.