Procedural rulings emanating from lawsuits are, generally, so much inside baseball. But they matter; sometimes, a great deal. And so earlier this year, a little-noticed ruling allowed Novartis to do something drugmakers and their lawyers pine to do - transfer lawsuits filed in state courts to federal courts, Drug & Device Law blog reports. The details, admittedly, are a bit arcane for those who aren’t members of the bar, but here’s why this has practical importance:

Generally, a drugmaker prefers to have a case heard in federal court for a few reasons - federal judges have more clerks to help allot their time; juries in federal courts must be unanimous, but not always in state courts; judges are appointed for life in federal court but are elected in some state courts; and federal law regarding scientific evidence, in many states, is more stringent than found in comparable state court rules, one of the wags at the blog, Mark Herrman of Jones Day, explains. In effect, drugmakers believe their odds are better in federal court.

This explains why drugmakers - and other defendants - spend so much energy trying to shift their cases to federal courts, and why plaintiffs’ lawyers prefer state courts. Under this rubric, one tried-and-true tactic preferred by plaintiffs is to file suit against a drugmaker in its home state. But until the ruling last May, which created a loophole about properly serving the defendants, drugmakers had a hard time removing state court cases and having them transferred to federal court. Since then, however, Roche has been shifting Accutane cases from a New Jersey state court overseeing mass torts.

Until last week, that is. The drugmaker used the ruling to side step a prohibition on transferring six state court cases to federal court. Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee, who is famous for overseeing Vioxx litigation, last week sided with plaintiffs and signed an order that, effectively, closes the loophole about serving defendants in their home states. (In New Jersey, this involved a quirky timing issue with the docket system.) And she plans to raise this issue with the Administrative Office of the Courts and the NJ Supreme Court. Here’s the order.

In her ruling, Higbee says the loophole has the “potential to create a manifest injustice” and describes the venue shifting allowed by the loophole as a “strategic end-run” around a “long-standing understanding of the law.” And she cites a federal statute granting the right to file a lawsuit in state court. This is unlikely to be the last we hear of the issue, though, given the potential importance to so much mass-tort pharma litigation that is housed in other states, as well. Plaintiffs will cheer at Higbee’s action and pharma will, of course, jeer.

Hat tip to Drug & Device Law