MICHELLE HIMES V. SOMATICS, LLC, No. 21-55517 (9th Cir. 2022)
Annotate this Case
Plaintiffs filed failure-to-warn product liability claims against a medical device manufacturer based on the manufacturer’s failure to warn about certain risks of its electroconvulsive therapy (“ECT”) device. The district court granted summary judgment to the manufacturer, finding that Plaintiff’s evidence failed to show that stronger warnings from the manufacturer would have affected their physician’s decision to prescribe the product.
Plaintiffs appealed, relying on testimony from their prescribing physicians that, had the manufacturer included stronger warnings, they would have communicated those warnings to Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs claimed that, in light of these warnings, they would not have given consent for the procedures.
Finding that California law applies and that there is no binding precedent on the issue, the Ninth Circuit certified the following question to the California Supreme Court: Is a plaintiff required to show that a stronger risk warning would have altered the physician’s decision to prescribe the product? Or can a plaintiff establish causation by showing that the physician would have communicated the stronger risk warnings to the plaintiff and a prudent person in the patient’s position would have declined the treatment?
Court Description: California Law. The panel certified to the Supreme Court of California the following question: Under California law, in a claim against a manufacturer of a medical product for a failure to warn of a risk, is the plaintiff required to show that a stronger risk warning would have altered the physician’s decision to prescribe the product? Or may the plaintiff establish causation by showing that the physician would have communicated the stronger risk warnings to the plaintiff, either in their patient consent disclosures or otherwise, and a prudent person in the patient’s position would have declined the treatment after receiving the stronger risk warning? HIMES V. SOMATICS 3
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on August 13, 2024.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.