Fosamax Warning Label Dispute Won’t Get Renewed High Court Look

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a federal appeals court decision that Merck Sharpe & Dohme Corp. couldn’t rely on the US Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of a proposed warning label to say it wouldn’t have been able to warn people about the risk of thighbone breaks from its osteoporosis drug Fosamax.

Merck asked the justices to overturn a decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that said the rejection letter’s language was ambiguous and therefore couldn’t establish federal preemption of the consumer plaintiffs’ state-law tort claims.

The appeals court said that ...