The Covid-19 lockdown period is approaching the six-month mark,
from mid-March to mid-September. Throughout the spring and summer
we have been reading old novels with convoluted plots and surprise
endings. Today we take a look at an old case, though only from a
prior decade, not a prior century. If the case is convoluted, it is
largely because the plaintiffs made it so, though the court also
got in on the chaos. As for the surprise ending, it is unclear if
that results from the court getting things right as much as it did,
or from getting things wrong as much as it did.
Kelley v. Insys Therapeutics, Inc., 2019 WL 329600
(Jan. 25, 2019), caught our attention because it discussed
preemption of claims involving an opioid. The federal court
deciding the matter sat in Cleveland, though it is not the same one
handling the massive opioids MDL. In any event, as alluded to
above, the Kelley decision gets some things right, some
things wrong, and its plot twists are only
