Supreme Court Rejects Final Pending Request for Review in Reglan Preemption Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the third and final request for review of a Pennsylvania state court ruling that would allow individuals to sue generics makers for failing to update warnings on drug labels.

The petition, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. et al. v. Paul E. Hassett, sought to have the court overturn the Philadelphia County court’s finding that plaintiffs’ product liability claims in state court aren’t preempted by federal law.

Some 2,300 individual complaints were consolidated in the Philadelphia case, which claims manufacturers failed to warn of risks of tardive dyskinesia on the label of generic Reglan (metoclopramide).

Previously, the court denied requests to review the Pennsylvania court’s rulings in Teva Pharmaceuticals v. Dorothy Bennett, on April 27, and in Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals v. Adams, Sparkell, et al on March 23.

This was Teva’s fourth stab at getting the nation’s highest court to consider failure-to-warn arguments. At the end of March, the Supreme Court rejected generics subsidiary Pliva’s request to hear similar arguments in an Iowa Supreme Court decision, leaving the drugmaker vulnerable to lawsuits under state law.

And in January, the Supreme Court turned down Teva’s request to review a California appeals court ruling that would also make generics makers liable for failing to update labels to reflect new risks.

Teva declined to comment on the decision. — Jonathon Shacat