A Carluzzo Rochkind & Smith note: Following is an excellent article by Virginia Lawyers Weekly. We did not handle this case, but it brings up important points your personal injury lawyers should be familiar with. For more than 30 years our personal injury lawyers in Manassas have helped clients with such matters in Prince William County, Fairfax County, Woodbridge, and throughout Northern Virginia. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact our law firm at (703) 361-0776.
CVS prevails in negligent vaccine injection suit
By Virginia Lawyers Weekly – 7/13/2025
Where a woman claimed she suffered a nerve injury after receiving two vaccine injections, but CVS was immune for its administration of one of the injections, and the woman presented no evidence from which a jury could find which injection caused her injury, CVS prevailed at summary judgment.
Background
At a CVS pharmacy in 2017, Amanda Watts was given two shots, one with the Pneumovax 23 vaccine and one with the Boostrix vaccine. According to Watts, both vaccines were negligently administered, in the same improper location in her arm. Watts was eventually diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS, a chronic pain condition that can result from nerve injury, which she attributes to CVS’s negligence.
But CVS is immune from suit for its administration of Boostrix under the federal National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. Accordingly, Watts’s complaint against CVS alleged only that it was negligent in its administration of Pneumovax. The district court granted summary judgment to CVS because Watts presented no evidence from which a jury could find that it was CVS’s administration of the Pneumovax vaccine, rather than the Boostrix vaccine, that caused her injury.
Analysis
A result of CVS’s federal-law immunity for Boostrix, Watts cannot recover unless there is evidence from which a jury could find that her personal injury was caused by her Pneumovax shot and not by the Boostrix shot given at the same time and in the same spot on her arm. Here, the court agrees with the district court that a jury could do no more than “guess” as to that crucial element of Watts’s case.
As the district court explained, the original deposition testimony of Watts’s own causation expert, Dr. Chhatre, was that one of Watts’s two shots caused her injury – but that he could not determine which one. The best he could do was opine that if the shots were not given in precisely the same spot, and if it were possible to identify which injection site was the “focus of residual pain and redness,” then he could identify the corresponding injection as the cause of Watts’s CRPS condition. But there is no evidence tying one or the other of Watts’s shots to the inflammation at the injection site, as the district court noted, and thus no way for Dr. Chhatre to determine causation.
Watts’s other expert witness, Ms. Ryle, was a pharmacist retained by Watts to opine only on the standard of care, and clarified at her deposition that she was not an expert on causation. But she did answer questions about causation, and for the sake of completeness, the court notes that nothing in her testimony could have supported a jury finding that Watts’s injuries were caused by her Pneumovax injection.
The court reaches the same conclusion even if it adds to the evidentiary record Dr. Chhatre’s post-deposition opinion that the two injections together caused Watts’s CRPS, with each contributing to her injury. What the record would support is only a finding that CVS’s Boostrix injection, for which it is immune, did indeed cause Watts’s injury, albeit in combination with the Pneumovax injection.
As the district court put it, Watts would still be relying for liability “upon the Boostrix vaccine as a second, separate negligent act” – something she cannot do consistent with the federal Vaccine Act. And Watts’s own theory is that her injury was “indivisible” and not capable of apportionment, entitling her to recover for the full extent of her harm – which means she has presented no evidence from which a jury could estimate the share of her harm attributable to the Pneumovax shot.
Affirmed.
Watts v. Maryland CVS Pharmacy LLC, Case No. 23-2025, July 1, 2025. 4th Cir. (Harris), from DMD at Baltimore (Rubin). Lindsey Nicole McCulley for Appellant. Katherine Herr Solomon for Appellee. VLW 025-2-245. 12 pp.
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