On March 12, 2018, CCL filed a letter with supplemental authority in the Minnesota Court of Appeals in Jones v. Medtronic, Inc., No. A17-1124. The case, which CCL President Robert S. Peck argued on February 1, involves a Medtronic implanted medical device that failed, killing the 17-year-old young woman whose life literally depended on it. The trial court had found the plaintiff's cause of action expressly and impliedly preempted because the allegations of manufacturing defects and other problems with the device did not point to specific violations of the application for approval submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, as well as because the claims of federal violations were supposedly attempts to enforce FDA requirements, an authority that the FDA holds exclusively. Peck, however, argued that the FDA's citation of Medtronic for numerous violations of federal regulations that were tied to the precise failures that Kaitlyn Jones experienced were sufficient to plead a parallel claim, particularly when Medtronic's application was not available to anyone but the FDA and Medtronic until a court ordered it produced in discovery.

      The March 12 letter advised the Court of a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Godelia v. Doe I, 881 F.3d 1309 (11th Cir. 2018), which was rendered after oral argument. In Godelia, the Eleventh Circuit explained a previous decision it had rendered, which the Jones trial court had relied upon to require greater specificity in the complaint. Godelia made clear that, in a case very similar to the Jones case, that specificity is not required. Instead, it issued a decision that tracked the argument Peck made in the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

     The Minnesota Court of Appeals has Jones under advisement.