Carlin v. Superior Court

I dissent.

In this case we must determine whether, under California law, when a plaintiff seeks recovery against a manufacturer of a prescription drug on a “failure-to-wam” theory, the liability of the drug manufacturer may be determined under the same strict liability principles that generally apply to the manufacturers of all other products, or, instead, must be limited to general negligence principles.

We faced a somewhat comparable issue in Brown v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1049 [245 Cal.Rptr. 412, 751 P.2d 470] (Brown). In Brown, a *1147unanimous court concluded that, in light of the…