Product Liability & Mass Torts Digest

The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently excluded plaintiffs’ experts who failed to specifically identify the allegedly harmful chemical or allegedly harmful dose of that chemical. As a result, the court granted summary judgment for the defendants, Twin Hill Acquisition et. al., and dismissed class action claims brought on behalf of current and former American Airlines (AA) employees.

A series of recent opinions by Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York exemplifies the effective judicial gatekeeping contemplated by Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticals. In In re Acetaminophen – ASD-ADHD Products Liability Litigation, Judge Cote repeatedly excluded the plaintiffs’ general causation experts even though each was “eminently qualified” because they did not reliably apply their methodologies. 

As part of our continuing commentary on the Zantac decision, this review examines the court’s rationale for doing so and highlights potential avenues for Daubert challenges to experts conducting Bradford Hill analyses.

Several recent decisions have shed light on the courts’ willingness to dismiss a product liability action where the plaintiff lacks sufficiently reliable evidence of general causation—that is, evidence that the product can cause the purported negative outcome.