Wrongful Death – Statute of Limitations

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On appeal from summary judgment, appellant argued that the District Court erred by concluding that appellant’s manufacturing-defect claim was preempted by the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) of 1976 to the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. By notice of related appeal, respondent argued that the District Court erred by concluding that appellant’s claim was not time-barred under Minnesota’s wrongful-death statute of limitations. The Court of Appeals held that (1) the statute of limitations on a wrongful-death claim arising out of an alleged product defect begins to run at the time the alleged wrongdoing occurred, not at the time the decedent discovered or could have discovered his injury; (2) to successfully plead a parallel claim to avoid federal preemption, a plaintiff must do more than merely cite to a federal Good Management Practice that may have been violated; and (3) state common-law strict-liability claims impose general requirements that are different from federal device-specific requirements and therefore are preempted by 21 U.S.C. sec. 360k(a) (2006). Affirmed in part and reversed in part; motion denied.

A12-0609 Lamere v. St. Jude Med., Inc. (Ramsey County)

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