In 1972, Neil Younger wrote his nice music, “Alabama,” the lyrics of which included the next: “Alabama, you’ve acquired the remainder of the union, that can assist you alongside; what’s going flawed?”  These lyrics occurred to us in 2013, once we learn the Weeks resolution, through which the Alabama Supreme Courtroom endorsed innovator legal responsibility. We get how loopy California would embrace such nonsense, however how might Alabama, dwelling of Huntsville rocket scientists and inspiration for To Kill a Mockingbird, arrive at such an error? We referred to as the Weeks resolution “execrable” once we wrote about it right here.  Two years later, we had been buzzing alongside to a higher music, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Candy Dwelling Alabama,” when the Alabama legislature abolished the innovator legal responsibility doctrine in that nice state.  (We mentioned that solonic reversal right here.)

As we speak’s case, Watkins v. Pfizer, Inc., 2023 WL 7308325 (S.D. Alabama Nov. 6, 2023), furnishes recent proof that the product legal responsibility ingredient of product identification is alive and nicely in Alabama, because of the legislature’s restoration of sanity. Watkins entails a extremely popular over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.  The professional se plaintiff sued a few producers, alleging that the OTC ache reliever prompted him to endure from Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS).  In case you’ve learn this weblog for any size of time, you already know that whereas SJS is a really uncommon illness, it’s not so uncommon within the space of OTC litigation.  SJS generally is a horrible illness, and SJS plaintiffs might be terribly sympathetic.  Even so, there are authorized and medical defenses in SJS circumstances.  

In Watkins, one of many defendants supplied up the protection that it was not a producer, designer, or vendor of the product.  It filed a movement to dismiss the case beneath Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).  The harm occurred in Alabama.  Subsequently, Alabama substantive regulation ruled the case.  Quoting the identical 2015 statutory modification that the Weblog mentioned (Ala. Code part 6-5-530(a) says that “Designers, producers, sellers, or lessors of merchandise not recognized as having been used, ingested, or encountered by an allegedly injured get together might not be held answerable for any alleged harm”), the Watkins resolution threw out the criticism as a result of, regardless of how liberally the professional se plaintiff’s criticism was construed —  which, within the Eleventh Circuit might be fairly liberal certainly – it didn’t embrace the statutorily mandated ingredient of figuring out a product made/bought by the defendant. The court docket took judicial discover of publicly out there supplies, together with the defendant’s annual report, that demonstrated who makes what. The plaintiff didn’t problem the knowledge displaying that the movant didn’t make or promote the drugs. Accordingly, the court docket dismissed all the plaintiff’s claims in opposition to the transferring defendant as a result of the plaintiff “didn’t state a believable declare for reduction beneath Alabama regulation in opposition to” the transferring defendant. 

As considered one of our esteemed defense-side colleagues (who performed for and received a nationwide championship beneath Bear Bryant) would say, Roll Tide.