Calif. High Court Grants Cert in Battle Over Gilead HIV/AIDS Drug

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court will decide whether Gilead Life Sciences Inc. must face litigation accusing it of negligently delaying development of a safer HIV/AIDS drug in order to maximize profits from tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), which plaintiffs say caused them to develop skeletal and kidney injuries.

The high court will review an appellate court’s ruling that “the legal duty of a manufacturer to exercise reasonable care can, in appropriate circumstances, extend beyond the duty not to market a defective product.”

“A variety of cases demonstrate that a manufacturer’s duty of reasonable care can extend more broadly than …