Court Opinion

ID: 9640956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:19:39.049906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:34.077058
License: Public Domain

Jim Hannah, Chief Justice, concurring. I concur. As the majority notes, in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 128 S. Ct. 999 (2008), the United States Supreme Court held that the State of New York’s tort duties were preempted by the MDA. Therefore, our holding in the present case that Arkansas tort duties are not preempted must be reversed. The United States Supreme Court is the court of last resort on questions of whether United States congressional acts preempt state law. However, I must express my deep concern with the Riegel decision. Clearly the MDA preempts states from setting up regulatory systems that compete with the regulatory systems set up by the federal government under the MDA. The state’s common law on tort is no such regulatory system. It does not compete with the MDA. The core premise underlying the Riegel decision is that common-law tort damages constitute requirements preempted under the MDA because the award of damages may affect how medical devices are designed, manufactured, and sold. The fear is that changes made by medical-device providers as a consequence of tort-damage suits will be made based on what must be done to avoid future tort damages as opposed to increasing safety and effectiveness. The Court believes that the FDA is more reliable than juries in dealing with the issue of defective medical devices.I disagree. No evidence was offered in Riegel to show that New York used its common-law tort damages as a means to set requirements for the safety and effectiveness of medical devices. Arkansas does not use common-law tort damages as a means to set requirements for the safety and effectiveness of medical devices. Arkansas has no special tort iaw that applies only to medical devices. The tort law that applies to medical devices in Arkansas applies to any other causes of action in tort. Common-law negligence liability is based on a duty of care by a defendant to a plaintiff that the defendant has breached. See Shannon v. Wilson, 329 Ark. 143, 947 S.W.2d 349 (1997). The duty in common-law negligence arises from the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant. Id. Compensatory damages redress the concrete loss that a plaintiff suffered from a defendant’s wrongful conduct. State Farm Mut. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408 (2003). In Arkansas, punitive damages are awarded only where the defendant’s conduct is malicious or done with deliberate intent to injure another. McCoy v. Montgomery, 370 Ark. 333, 259 S.W.3d 430 (2007). Thus, neither form of damages constitutes a direct or indirect competing regulatory system in violation of the MDA. The common law on tort is not preempted under the terms of the MDA. I am also compelled to express my dismay at the summary abandonment of venerable principles of state common law that have been developed over many generations. By a conclusory and incomplete analysis, our law is dismissed. In the place of well-reasoned judicial decisions reaching back to the England of Blackstone, injured plaintiffs are told that instead of looking to their common law for redress they must look to a regulatory agency that has no power to grant them any redress. Further, the MDA, which was enacted to protect the public against defective and unsafe medical devices through federal regulation, is now turned on its head and instead grants immunity to the providers of medical devices. I believe that the United States Congress will step in to amend the MDA and heal the injury caused in this case; however, the injury done to the common law and principles of federalism will not be so easily healed. Brown, J., joins.