A federal judge has tentatively agreed to strike recent evidence from a plaintiff’s expert who claims to have found a software bug responsible for unintended acceleration defects in Toyota vehicles.

The folks at Drug and Device Law are already calling a Minnesota federal district judge's ruling to dismiss with prejudice scores of product liability cases involving a Medtronic cardiac defibrillator system "an early entry for one of the top ten decisions of 2009." Judge Richard Kyle's ruling in the Sprint Fidelis consolidated cases is considered to be the first major decision to rely on the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in Riegel v. Medronic, Inc., which found that suits against medical device makers are pre-empted by federal law.