The 10th Circuit decided an interesting FOIA case this week. In World Pub. Co. v. United States Dept. of Justice, the Court held that Tulsa World magazine was not entitled to six mugshots under the Freedom of Information Act. For more on this case, see posts on Politico and ABA Journal.
The Maryland Supreme Court denied a negligence claim against the state for serving a peanut butter sandwich to an allergic child through the free lunch program. In Pace v. State, the court found that the National School Lunch Act simply establishes a subsidized lunch program to benefit children at participating schools and did not impose a specific statutory duty of care towards children with food allergies.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a products liability case against the manufacturers of Motrin. In Lofton v. McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, the Court found that federal law preempted a Texas law that required plaintiffs to assert, in failure to warn cases, that a drug manufacturer withheld or misrepresented material information to the FDA. Since fraud on the FDA was not asserted in this claim, it was preempted by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), and defendants were entitled to summary judgment in their favor.
