High court upholds state product liability laws.(Supreme Court)

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, July, 1996 by Brostoff, Steven

WASHINGTON - A U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing plaintiffs to sue medical product manufacturers in state courts is a potential step backwards for medical device innovation," a health industry trade group said. The high court said that a federal law which preempts state safety requirements that are different from federal standards with respect to medical devices was not intended to provide medical device manufacturers with immunity from state product liability standards.

The court said that the federal law is generic in nature and cannot be interpreted as pre-empting state requirements. Alan H. Magazine, president of the Washington-based Health Industry Manufacturers Association, which represents more than 700 medical device manufacturers, said in a...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.