The Medical Device Amendment’s pre-emption clause continues to provide legal cover for medtech companies in the U.S., with Abbott getting a payer’s lawsuit dismissed over the past week.
Abbott faced a purported class-action lawsuit that a third-party payer — the ASEA/AFSCME Local 52 Health Benefits Trust in Alaska — filed last year in federal court in Minnesota. The ASEA/AFSCME Local 52 Health Benefits Trust claimed that it and other third-party payers had to needlessly spend hundreds of millions of dollars because of the way that St. Jude Medical, now part of Abbott, handled a cardiac rhythm management device batteries recall.
U.S. District Judge David S. Doty, however, dismissed the case in an order dated Jan. 24.