A Medical Device Daily

RA Medical Systems (Carlsbad, California) has reported that a California State Court has ruled that its malicious prosecution case against PhotoMedex (Radnor, Pennsylvania) will move forward. The court denied PhotoMedex, Jenkens & Gilchrist, and Michael Matthias' motion to strike the claims, which the defendants had filed under California's anti-SLAPP laws.

RA Medical was required to show a probability that it will prevail on its malicious prosecution claim vs. PhotoMedex. In its ruling, the court determined that RA Medical's suit met required criteria: the underlying action was commenced or maintained at PhotoMedex's direction; was terminated in RA Medical's favor (Medical Device Daily, Jan. 7, 2004); was brought without probable cause; and was commenced with malice.

The court acknowledged that three of the five previous causes of action had been dismissed by summary judgment. The court also found that the voluntary dismissal of the two remaining causes of action on the eve of trial demonstrated their lack of merit, and it rejected the argument that they had been dismissed for business reasons.

Dean Irwin, president of RA Medical, said, "We are now looking forward to proving our damages. Although the litigation was harmful to RA Medical and me, we have doubled our laser sales each quarter and expect the trend to continue. The advanced features, small size and light weight, and affordable price are attracting leading dermatologists to our Excimer Laser Phototherapy system for psoriasis and vitiligo."