A federal court will decide whether Snapple really was “all natural,” as its label claimed. A lawsuit working its way through the system argues that the Dr Pepper Snapple Group violated consumer-fraud laws by marketing the drink as “all natural” at a time when it was made with an artificial sweetener. An appeals court yesterday revived the case, which was thrown out by a lower court in 2008, Bloomberg News reports . While the case may seem a bit removed from the Health Blog’s usual bailiwick, it touches on an issue that’s hugely important to the drug and device industries: Preemption. That’s the legal doctrine that says when a company’s product follows the rules set by a federal agency — such as the FDA, which regulates food and drinks as well as drugs and medical devices– the company cannot face lawsuits in state court. Two recent Supreme Court decisions have clarified how preemption applies to drugs and devices. In one case , the court said drug makers can be sued in

state court over alleged defects, even if the FDA has approved the drug. In a separate case , the court held that federal law bars lawsuits “challenging the safety or effectiveness of a medical device,” as long as the device is marketed in a form that received premarket approval from the FDA. (We explained in this post why there are different standards for drugs and devices.) The back-and-forth in the Snapple case appears to turn on differing interpretations of preemption. The lower court threw the case out on the grounds that FDA regulations preempt lawsuits in state court (the Snapple case started in state court, before getting bumped to federal court). The appeals court had a different take on preemption: “It does not appear that Congress has regulated so comprehensively in either the food and beverage or juice fields that there is no role for the states,” the judges wrote, according to Bloomberg. Photo: Getty Images

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Snapple to Face Lawsuit Over ‘All Natural’ Claim