Evening round-up
on Jun 24, 2011 at 12:43 am
The Court issued decisions in six cases today. This round-up includes media coverage of these six decisions only; our regular round-up tomorrow morning will include both additional coverage of today’s opinions and other Court-related news. Coverage is organized by case.
In PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, the Court held that federal drug regulations applicable to generic drug manufactures directly conflict with, and thus preempt, state-law tort claims alleging a failure to provide adequate warning labels.  Reuters, the ABA Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, the Atlantic Wire, the Associated Press (via NPR), CBS News, PrawfsBlawg, Courthouse News Service, and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog all have coverage.
In another case affecting the pharmaceutical industry, Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc., the Court – by a vote of six to three – struck down a Vermont law that prohibited the commercial use of information about physicians’ prescribing habits. Lyle Denniston has coverage of the case for this blog, while Nina Totenberg of NPR, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, Courthouse News Service, the Wall Street Journal’s Health and Business Blog, the Associated Press, Vermont Public Radio, and the Volokh Conspiracy all also have coverage. [Disclaimer: Goldstein, Howe & Russell represented the data-mining respondents in this case.]
The Court’s decision in the case of the late Anna Nicole Smith (also known as Vickie Lynn Marshall), Stern v. Marshall, was perhaps the most widely covered opinion of the day. The Court held that although Congress had authorized bankruptcy judges to issue binding decisions on state-law claims like Smith’s, it lacked authority under the Constitution to do so. In addition to coverage from the news outlets that traditionally cover the Court – this blog, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Bloomberg, ABC News, the Associated Press, Reuters (via the Chicago Tribune), the ABA Journal, and the Full Disclosure blog of Forbes – other coverage came from Vanity Fair Legal News and E! Online.
In its decision in Bullcoming v. New Mexico, the Court held that if prosecutors seek to introduce a crime lab report at trial, the person who conducted the test and prepared the report must testify; a supervisor cannot do so in the absence of that technician. Coverage of the opinion can be found on this blog and at Slate, the Christian Science Monitor, the Volokh Conspiracy, Sentencing Law and Policy Blog, Crime and Consequences, and the ABA Journal. [Disclosure: Goldstein, Howe & Russell represented the petitioner in this case.]
Briefly:
- Sentencing Law and Policy Blog has coverage of the “barely won†victory (vote of four-one-four) for the petitioner in Freeman v. United States.
- Bloomberg and Courthouse News Service have coverage of the Court’s decision in CSX Transportation v. McBride, in which the Court held that, for purposes of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, a railroad causes or contributes to an employee’s injury if the railroad’s negligence plays any part in bringing about the injury a railroad.
