Last month, when I wrote about the Obama administration’s apparent flip-flop on the question of federal pre-emption of product liability claims against generic drugmakers, I mentioned a curious footnote in the Justice Department’s Supreme Court amicus brief in Mutual Pharmaceutical v. Barrett. All the wrangling over liability for generics, which are required by law to use the same labels as the brand-name drugs they replicate, could be unnecessary, Justice hinted. “This office has been informed that Food and Drug Administration is considering a regulatory change that would allow generic manufacturers, like brand-name manufacturers, to change their labeling in appropriate circumstances,” the brief said. “If such a regulatory change is adopted, it could eliminate pre-emption of failure-to-warn claims against generic-drug manufacturers.”
I should have given the footnote more attention. In the last couple of weeks, it has prompted speculation by a number of pharma websites about whether the FDA really intends to upend longstanding policy barring generics from altering their labels, and, if so, what that portends for their product liability exposure. On Wednesday, I emailed the FDA to ask. In an email response, an FDA representative confirmed what the Justice Department footnote suggested: “FDA is considering a regulatory change that would allow generic manufacturers, like brand-name manufacturers, to change their labeling in appropriate circumstances,” the agency said. “FDA intends to provide an opportunity for public comment with respect to any such proposed changes to its regulations.”
The FDA email, according to Kurt Karst of Hyman, Phelps & McNamara (and the FDA Law Blog), is the first confirmation of what FDA watchers have been anticipating since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Pliva v. Mensing freed generics from liability for failing to warn consumers about dangerous side effects.
So, will generics welcome the opportunity to provide consumers with more information about potentially dangerous side effects of their drugs? Not bloody likely.
As Karst points out, the FDA still isn’t giving much away about its intentions, so it’s premature to speculate on how a policy change would impact liability for generics. Still, the Justice Department was pretty clear that if FDA policy imposes labeling responsibility on generics, generic drugmakers won’t be able to rely on pre-emption as a defense. And the last time generics faced that prospect, when Congress was considering legislation introduced last year in response to the Supreme Court’s Pliva ruling, the trade association for generic pharmaceutical companies was squarely opposed to any increased responsibility for drugmakers.
