Sidney Hillman Health Center of Rochester v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc.

Case Updates

Click here to view the opinion.

The U.S. Chamber filed an amicus brief urging the Seventh Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision dismissing plaintiffs’ RICO claim for failure to plead proximate causation.

The Chamber’s brief explains that the Supreme Court has decisively rejected the notion that foreseeability and intent govern proximate cause. Instead, Supreme Court precedent compels dismissal of claims where the plaintiffs fail to allege a direct relation between their purported injuries and the alleged injurious conduct. The brief argues that the district court in this case correctly dismissed plaintiffs’ claim because the purported causal chain between defendants’ representations to physicians and plaintiffs’ alleged injuries is too attenuated. The brief also warns that an overly permissive proximate-cause standard will encourage burdensome litigation, which in turn can chill pharmaceutical companies from lawfully disseminating truthful information about beneficial unapproved uses of FDA-approved drugs.

This brief was filed jointly with the National Association of Manufacturers and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Robert N. Weiner, Jeffrey L. Handwerker, R. Stanton Jones, and Sally L. Pei of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP served as co-counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center.