US Supreme Court Won't Hear Tuna Fish-Mercury Case
21 April 2009 - 12:45AM
Dow Jones News
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a lower court
ruling that allowed a New Jersey woman to sue a tuna-fish producer
over the mercury poisoning she allegedly suffered after her diet
consisted almost exclusively of canned tuna for five years.
The woman, Deborah Fellner, said Tri-Union Seafoods LLC, the
maker of Chicken of the Sea brand tuna, failed to warn her of the
risks of consuming tuna fish.
Tri-Union said U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations
prevented it from placing a mercury warning label on its products.
The company said that Fellner's suit should be thrown out because
it conflicted with the FDA's regulatory regime.
A federal trial judge had tossed Fellner's lawsuit, but an
appeals court in Philadelphia reinstated it, saying the FDA had
taken no regulatory action that preempted her legal claims.
The Supreme Court rejected Tri-Union's request that it review
the case. Instead, the justices let the lower court ruling stand
without comment.
Tri-Union argued that the appeals court ruling put it in the
untenable position of facing legal liability under state law for
not including a warning label that would have rendered its products
misbranded under federal law.
Among other things, the company pointed to a 2005 letter the FDA
sent former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who was
attempting to sue Tri-Union for not placing a warning label on its
products. The FDA told Lockyer that such warning labels were
preempted by federal law. The agency said it had analyzed the issue
for several years and decided not to require mercury warning labels
on seafood products.
Fellner said the FDA's actions on mercury in seafood were
informal in nature and not strong enough to preempt her legal
claims.
In other Supreme Court action Monday, the justices refused to
review a federal appeals court ruling that allowed shareholders to
bring a class action securities-fraud lawsuit against Gilead
Sciences Inc. (GILD) for allegedly concealing a fraud related to
the company's key HIV drug Viread in 2003.
The plaintiffs alleged that demand for the drug was artificially
inflated because Gilead was secretly and illegally marketing the
drug for uses not approved by the FDA. Gilead said the plaintiffs'
could not show that any decrease in the company's stock price was
connected to the alleged fraud.
-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222; brent.kendall@dowjones.com