TwIqbal & PMA Preemption, Perfect Together

Editor's Note: James M. Beck is the author of, among other things, Drug and Medical Device Product Liability Handbook (2004) (with Anthony Vale). He is a counsel in the Philadelphia office of Dechert LLP and can be reached at [email protected].

We have written about preemption in PMA (pre-market approved) medical device cases. We have also had a lot to say about using TwIqbal (that is Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (2009), and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)) to police plaintiffs' persistently poor pleading habits.

In this article we are synergizing the two, and looking at …