Finding the pulse of McNeil pharmaceuticals within the corporate structure of Johnson & Johnson required a federal judge to look beyond the U.S. Supreme Court’s “nerve center” test in order to fulfill the high court’s directive that corporate citizenship should be determined by where its principal place of business is located, rather than where it declares that place to be.
Because McNeil, a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that is the maker of allegedly defective children’s Tylenol that killed a 2-year-old boy in Washington, is run primarily by executives of its parent company in New Jersey, the company is a citizen of that state, not Pennsylvania, where the medicine was produced, U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled.
