Programming note: Due to the oral argument that I will be presenting Tuesday morning in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (described two posts earlier, below), additional posts will appear here on Tuesday afternoon.

Update: Tuesday morning’s oral argument seemed to go quite well. Attorneys Robert C. Heim and Sheila L. Birnbaum divided the oral argument for defendant/appellant Wyeth, while I presented the entire argument for plaintiff/appellee Mary Daniel.

The Legal Intelligencer will likely have coverage of the oral argument in a day or so. And when Pennsylvania Cable Network posts the video of the oral argument online, I will link to it.

“Appeals court upholds Illinois campaign disclosure law”: Nate Raymond of Reuters has this report on a ruling that a partially divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued today.

On the agenda: Tomorrow morning, I will present oral argument on behalf of the plaintiffs/appellees to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in a case captioned Daniel v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

The question (as drafted by counsel for Wyeth) that Pennsylvania’s highest court granted allowance of appeal to review back in December 2011 states:

Whether the Superior Court erred in reversing the trial court’s grant of JNOV for Wyeth on [Respondents’] punitive damages claim under Pennsylvania law, where (a) the FDA extensively reviewed and approved the prescription drug at issue, the sufficiency of the testing for that drug, and the drug’s label warnings of the risk of breast cancer, (b) there was no evidence that Wyeth concealed information from or misled the FDA or knew that the risk of breast cancer was greater than disclosed in its warnings, and (c) the drug was extensively tested and studied by Wyeth and independent researchers?

You can access plaintiffs’ Brief for Appellees, which I filed in April 2012, at this link.

In essence, defendant/appellant Wyeth is advancing two arguments in its appeal. First, where a prescription drug is FDA approved, punitive damages should be unavailable to the plaintiff unless the plaintiff can show that the drug’s manufacturer fraudulently withheld information from the FDA. (Of course, drug manufacturers have argued with some success — see here and here — that federal law would preempt any award for punitive damages based on a drugmaker’s alleged fraud on the FDA, potentially making that proposed carve-out illusory.)

And second, Wyeth is arguing when the supposedly “undisputed” facts relevant to punitive damages contained in the record (which is how Wyeth’s refers to its version of the facts relating to punitive damages) are considered, the record cannot support an award of punitive damages under Pennsylvania law.

Arguments are scheduled to get underway at Pennsylvania’s highest court tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., and this case is listed fifth on the oral argument calendar.

“How Nuanced is Justice Scalia’s Judicial Philosophy? An Exchange.” Today, The New Republic posted online this written exchange between Bryan A. Garner and Richard A. Posner. I have previously linked to Garner’s response to Posner’s review. Posner’s reply to Garner’s response is new.

Programming note: Additional posts will appear here this afternoon.

“Ward Churchill loses appeal to win back CU job”: The Associated Press has a report that begins, “A former University of Colorado professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims with a Nazi has lost his appeal to get his job back.”

You can access today’s ruling of the Supreme Court of Colorado at this link.

“Will acceptance of gays by high court influence rulings?” Joan Biskupic of Reuters has this report.

“In Pennsylvania, the Human Costs of Judicial Confirmation Delays; While Republicans and the White House dawdle on uncontroversial judicial nominations, real people suffer from delayed dockets and understaffed courts”: Andrew Cohen has this essay online at The Atlantic.

“A Tight Election May Be Tangled in Legal Battles”: This front page article appears today in The New York Times.