The immunity Perdue proposes would be for pharmaceutical manufacturers that are Georgia resident corporations. So, there would be no diversity of citizenship if a Georgia corporation were sued in Georgia state or federal court. Since there is almost never a federal question presented in a products liabliity lawsuit(now that preemption is gone), there would be no basis to either remove the case to federal court or to file it in a Georgia federal court to begin with. If such a case were to end up in a Georgia federal court, however, as Callahan noted the court would still be applying Georgia state products liability law so the statute would still apply.

Not quite, its not the federal court itself that’s important, but rather federal question jurisdiction, a legal action based on federal law. Yes, that usually means federal court, but state courts can hear federal question suits as well (in either place, federal and not state law would apply).

Federal courts also hear diversity jurisdiction cases– when citizens of different state are involved in a lawsuit worth over $75,000, the case can be removed from state court to federal court. However, in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938) the Supreme Court held that in diversity cases, the federal court would apply state law to decide the case. So a federal court, in that situation, would have to apply Georgia law after all.

Today’s ruling has absolutely no effect on the ability of states to change their laws to prohibit product liability lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies who had their products approved by the FDA, or for that matter to eliminate product liability suits altogether

The Wyeth v. Levine decision is about preemption of state law product liability claims by federal law. Today, the court held that in the case of pharmaceuticals product liability lawsuits under state law are not preempted (with a few exceptions).

What Governor Perdue is suggesting is that Georgia law be changed to prohibit pharmaceutical product liability actions under state law. Any potential litigant would be forced to sue a Georgia based pharmaceutical company in federal court, which is typically more defendant friendly.