Rick, et al. v. Wyeth, Inc., et al.

Plaintiffs, citizens of New York, sued pharmaceutical companies (defendants) in New York state court claiming that defendants' hormone replacement therapy drugs caused plaintiffs to develop breast cancer. At issue was whether dismissal of plaintiffs' actions as time-barred under New York law precluded assertion of the same claims in a federal court diversity action in a State where the claims would not be time-barred. The court held that under New York claim preclusion law as articulated in Smith v. Russell Sage College and the many New York appellate decisions applying Russell Sage, the prior grant of summary judgment dismissing plaintiffs' New York claims as time-barred precluded the assertion of the same claims in these federal diversity actions in Minnesota. Therefore, the district court properly applied the Full Faith and Credit Statute in these cases, even if the New York Court of Appeals declined in the future to apply statute-of-limitations claim preclusion to more sympathetic plaintiffs. View "Rick, et al. v. Wyeth, Inc., et al." on Justia Law