Brand-Name Drug Manufacturer Liable For Personal Injuries Caused By Generic Drugs Manufactured By Different Company In Alabama
The Supreme Court of Alabama held last week that under Alabama law, a brand-name drug company can be held liable for fraud or misrepresentation based on statements made in connection with the manufacture of a brand-name prescription drug by a plaintiff claiming physical injury cause by a generic drug manufactured by a different company. In an opinion that most would consider an outlier in this area of law, the court reasoned that it was not fundamentally unfair to hold the brand-name manufacturer liable in this situation because the alleged misrepresentations on the generic drugs were actually drafted by the brand-name manufacturers given the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the generic drug’s warning label must match the brand-name version approved by the FDA. The court went to great lengths to indicate that its opinion was not creating new tort law or “turning products-liability law (or tort law for that matter) on its head,” and explained that its opinion was limited to the heavily regulated field of prescription drugs.
