The Central District of California recently shut down, on preemption grounds, a group of class-action plaintiffs’ second attempt to assert claims alleging that benzoyl peroxide (BPO) in over-the-counter (OTC) acne treatments unavoidably degrades into the carcinogen benzene.

A cert petition filed in March in the long-running In re Fosamax (Alendronate Sodium) Products Liability Litigation gives the Supreme Court a chance to clarify—for the second time—the Third Circuit’s restrictive application of the impossibility preemption defense.

A series of recent opinions by Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York exemplifies the effective judicial gatekeeping contemplated by Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticals. In In re Acetaminophen – ASD-ADHD Products Liability Litigation, Judge Cote repeatedly excluded the plaintiffs’ general causation experts even though each was “eminently qualified” because they did not reliably apply their methodologies.