HipSaver, Inc. v. Kiel

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Plaintiff, HipSaver, Inc., was a Massachusetts corporation engaged in the design, manufacture, and sale of hip protectors. In 2007, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article authored in part by Defendant, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, that concluded based on the results of a clinical trial that hip protectors were "not effective in nursing home populations." HipSaver filed a complaint against Defendant, claiming that Defendant had disparaged HipSaver's product in the JAMA article and was liable for monetary damages. The trial judge granted Defendant's motion for summary judgment and dismissed HipSaver's complaint. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that summary judgment was properly entered for Defendant where HipSaver failed to demonstrate that it had a reasonable expectation of proving all of the essential elements of a cause of action for commercial disparagement. View "HipSaver, Inc. v. Kiel" on Justia Law