Wright v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, No. 21-1524 (Fed. Cir. 2022)
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B.W., a two-year-old in good health, experienced immune thrombocytopenic purpura after receiving his measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. Later blood tests showed his condition had resolved. More than six months after he was first diagnosed, B.W. presented with bruising, a possible symptom of immune thrombocytopenic purpura, but blood tests showed the condition had not recurred. In a suit under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, the Claims Court ruled in favor of B.W., holding that those blood tests, occurring more than six months after his initial diagnosis, were “residual effects” of B.W.’s vaccine injury that satisfied the severity requirement of 42 U.S.C. 300aa-11(c)(1)(D).
The Federal Circuit reversed. A residual effect must be a change within the patient that is caused by the vaccine injury. B.W.’s later bruising was not caused by his vaccine injury, and his tests did not reveal, constitute, or cause any somatic change. Tests revealed B.W. had no lingering symptoms or recurrence of thrombocytopenic purpura. There was no argument that the testing itself was detrimental to B.W.’s health such that it might qualify under section 300aa-11(c)(1)(D)(i) as a “residual effect” or a “complication” of thrombocytopenic purpura.
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