Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.
Justices on the US Supreme Court seemed split today as they heard arguments in a case to determine whether Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company now owned by Pfizer, should pay the family of a woman who became ill after receiving one of the company’s vaccines as a baby.
Such cases are normally heard in “Vaccine Court” — a special court established in 1986 to deal with concerns that rampant lawsuits might discourage companies from developing vaccines. Fees collected on each dose of vaccine are pooled together to fund Vaccine Court settlements, protecting manufacturers from the cost of dealing with these cases directly.
But when the Bruesewitz family’s case was dismissed in Vaccine Court, they turned to the Pennsylvania state court system and gradually worked their way up to the US Supreme Court.