Quoted from http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202463184837
For Big Pharma, 'Nerve Center' Test May Be Unnerving
Shannon P. Duffy
The Legal Intelligencer
July 01, 2010
In one of the first rulings to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's new "nerve center" test for determining corporate citizenship, a federal judge has ruled that since GlaxoSmithKline's executive headquarters is in Philadelphia, the company cannot remove a products liability lawsuit from a Pennsylvania state court to federal court.
"As a citizen of Pennsylvania, GSK violated 28 U.S.C. Section 1441(b) when it removed this case from the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas," U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner wrote in his nine-page opinion in Monroe v. SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoSmithKline (pdf).
The ruling, if followed by other federal judges, could prove to be a major setback for GSK because it would face the prospect of a Philadelphia jury in defending a growing wave of lawsuits over drugs such as Avandia, a diabetes treatment, and Lamictal, an anti-seizure drug.