Mar. 6, 2026
From a broken faucet to big pharma duty
The California Supreme Court is weighing whether a drug company can be held liable for keeping a safer medication off the market -- a question that turns on one of the court's most consequential tort rulings.
On a November day in San Francisco in 1963, the porcelain knob of the cold-water faucet on Nancy Christian's bathroom basin was cracked, but she didn't mention that to her guest, James Rowland. The knob broke as he turned it, seriously cutting his hand.
Christian's lapse in judgment in failing to alert Rowland to the flawed faucet has echoed down the decades from its first telling in a landmark 1968 California Supreme Court opinion to its appearance now as a central pla...
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