The June 9, ruling from the bench, drew massive attention to the case when New Jersey Superior Court Judge, Carol Higbee, refused to exclude the claims.
"The preamble, as I see it, is a political statement by the FDA," she said.
"The primary purpose of it," she stated, "is to criticize state courts and to set forth the FDA's position, not to criticize state courts so much as to set forth the FDA's position that they believe there should be federal preemption of all tort actions."
"What the preamble is saying," Judge Higbee noted, "is the FDA should be the final word."
She refused to dismiss the claims based on the preamble she said, because it "has nothing to do with science." In conclusion, she told Merck defense attorneys:
"It has nothing to do with what happened back in 2000, 2001, 2002, when these issues were being debated. It is contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions. It is contrary to all the law on preemption.
"And I am not going to allow you to use it."
Merck later enjoyed a victory at trial when a jury decided that Vioxx was not the main cause of Elaine Doherty's heart attack, but a favorable ruling on the preemption issue prior to trial could have potentially saved the company billions of dollars. According to the company's SEC filings, as of October 9, 2006, Merck is a named defendant in about 13,850 Vioxx cases in the New Jersey State court coordinated litigation.
The next victory using the preemption argument was a major win in August, 2006, when a California court dismissed the Celebrex failure-to-warn claims against Pfizer, In re Bextra and Celebrex Marketing Sales Practices and Product Liability Litigation, No M: 05-1699 CRB, 2006 WL 2374742 (N.D. CA, August 16, 2006).
In opposing the motion, the plaintiffs argued that because the FDCA does not provide a monetary remedy, Congress must not have intended the FDA to have authority over damage claims and that the FDA's position on preemption was not entitled to deference because it was clearly erroneous and inconsistent with the regulations.
Saying the FDA specifically considered the safety risks about Celebrex alleged in the lawsuit and determined the risks should not be included on the label, the court said the failure-to-warn claims "conflict with the FDA's determination of the proper warning and pose an obstacle to the full accomplishment of the objectives of the FDCA."
But the judge refused to dismiss the false advertising claims. The plaintiffs argued that the Celebrex ads were false and misleading because they exceeded the labeled and approved gastrointestinal benefits and also minimized the established risks of the drug.
Pfizer claimed that because it submitted the ads for FDA approval, and the FDA did not object, the FDA had determined that the ads were accurate and struck a fair balance of the risks and the benefits of Celebrex.
However, the court refused to preempt the claims without a record showing that the FDA had reviewed each ad and approved it. The court also pointed out the FDA's silence about whether its regulations preempt false advertising claims, in contrast to its stated position on failure-to-warn claims.
A little over a month later, on September 29, 2006, across the country in New Jersey, the court in McNellis v. Pfizer, refused to allow the preemption defense based in part on the fact that the text of FDA regulations had remained unchanged for years, and the regulations did not conflict with New Jersey's failure-to-warn laws.
The McNellis Zoloft-suicide case comes with a history. On December 29, 2005, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey had also denied Pfizer's original motion for summary judgment. The court reasoned that the FDA's approval of a label creates only a minimum standard and that the drug maker may strengthen the warnings as long as the new warning is not false or misleading.
