A Victory for Common Sense in CA

California is known nationwide as a “Judicial Hellhole” for the absurd lawsuits tolerated nowhere but here. California has absurd class action lawsuits, widespread lawsuit abuse associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Proposition 65, and constant attempts by plaintiffs’ lawyers to make our state’s problem with lawsuit abuse even worse.

But every now and then, lawyers come up empty-handed in their efforts to increase their profits by creating more litigation in California. Such was the case in a recent decision by a judge in Orange County to reject a “public nuisance” lawsuit brought by two California counties against the pharmaceutical industry.

In this case, the counties of Santa Clara and Orange partnered with contingency-fee lawyers to sue five pharmaceutical companies claiming that they created a “public nuisance” by marketing and selling painkiller drugs. The problem with this, as the judge pointed out, is that prescription drugs in this country are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which carefully limits how drugs are marketed and for what conditions they are to be used for. Reasoning that the experts in FDA are best suited to handle this issue, the judge put the case on hold indefinitely.

Unfortunately, this common sense is not on display in other lawsuits filed in California. Another “public nuisance” lawsuit has resulted in a $1.15 billion verdict that will enrich trial lawyers while putting the state’s residential housing market in danger. And so many lawsuits against food products are filed in California that it is known as the “food court.”

What all these cases have in common is that plaintiffs’ lawyers are trying to find new ways to profit from suing manufacturers who are selling legal, regulated products, whether it is prescription drugs or food products. No wonder many think California is one of the nation’s worst judicial hellholes.