Brock v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 88-2311
| Decision Date | 08 September 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-2311,88-2311 |
| Citation | 884 F.2d 167 |
| Parties | Mr. and Mrs. Floyd BROCK, individually and as next friend of Rachel Brock, a minor, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Robert M. Dato, Santa Monica, Cal., O.J. Weber, Mehaffey, Weber, Keigh & Gonsoulin, Beaumont, Tex., and Ramey, Flock, Hutchins, Jeffus, McClendon & Crawford, P.C., Tyler, Tex., for defendant-appellant.
Thomas H. Bleakley, Detroit, Mich., W. James Kronzer, and Richard Warren Mithoff, Houston, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, William M. Steger, District Judge.
(Opinion June 6, 5th Cir., 1989, 874 F.2d 307)
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, GEE, REAVLEY, POLITZ, KING, JOHNSON, WILLIAMS, GARWOOD, JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS, JONES, SMITH, and DUHE, Circuit Judges.
ON SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
The judges in regular active service of this court having been polled at the request of one of them, and a majority of the judges having voted against granting rehearing en banc in this case (Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and Local Rule 35), the suggestion for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED.
If the court, by refusing to rehear en banc, approves the panel's application of Boeing Co. v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir.1969), I wonder what is left in this circuit of the Boeing rule or, for that matter, the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury.
Six highly qualified and experienced experts testified that bendectin is a human teratogen, i.e. capable of causing human birth defects. Three of them testified to the opinion that bendectin was a cause of Rachel Brock's deformation. Their opinions of causation were not the product of faulty syllogisms but were predicated upon medical study and research and upon their explanation of the process by which the doxylamine element in bendectin can interfere with the development of nerve cells in an embryo. The panel picks at details in the testimony lacking expert consensus, but its characterization of this voluminous expert proof as "speculation" could just as well doom virtually all expert testimony. The panel reaches its climax with the novel declaration that only epidemiological studies can prove causal relation between bendectin and birth defects, and it enters into the debate with Dr. Glasser on the statistical significance of the Heinonen study. In the absence of expert consensus must we now always await population studies before a jury verdict may be based upon medical opinion? So says the panel, at least for bendectin cases. This, despite the testimony here that case reports and laboratory research reveal teratogens and that no epidemiological study has ever discovered a teratogen.
The panel tries to draw support from Richardson by Richardson v. Richardson-Merrell, Inc., 857 F.2d 823 (D.C.Cir.1988), but that court ruled that the plaintiff's medical expert lacked an adequate basis, of the type reasonably relied upon by experts in his field, for his opinion, which left no support for the verdict. That record was a far cry from the one we are called upon to review here. Though it tinkers with bits of the extensive expert testimony in this record, our panel does not purport to hold that the foundation for the opinions of these experts fails to satisfy Federal Rule of Evidence 703.
I do not dissent because I think that the panel reached the wrong conclusion--about that I am not sure. I prefer to examine this case en banc because the panel's opinion shies from a direct confrontation with one of the more vexing problems currently facing the federal courts--the role of experts. 1 This case raises important questions about the role of experts in the federal courts, including whether we should accept opinions of experts not based upon a generally accepted scientific principle and the more broadly stated concern that substantive principles such as tort law are not handling science issues in a rational manner. 2 We should confront them, and state the guiding principle, if we can.
A significant body of judicial and academic comment has expressed fear concerning these dangers. Several examples of such comments were collected by Barry Epstein and Marc Klein in an article for Seton Hall Law Review. 3 The authors found such concerns expressed as early as 1853 in the following language from a federal court opinion:
[T]he experience of all concerned in the administration of justice tends to the conclusion that this species of evidence is less satisfactory than any other.... [W]here there is any room for a difference of opinion, experts, in about equal numbers, will generally be found testifying on each side. 4
Much more recently, the Attorney General's Tort Policy Working Group reported an "increasingly serious problem" of
reliance by judges and juries on noncredible scientific or medical testimony, studies or opinions. It has become all too "common" for 'experts' or 'studies' on the fringes of or even well beyond the outer parameters of mainstream scientific or medical views to be presented to juries as valid evidence from which conclusions can be drawn. The use of such invalid scientific evidence (commonly referred to as 'junk science') has resulted in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific and medical knowledge. Most importantly, this development has led to a deep and growing cynicism about the ability of tort law to deal with difficult scientific and medical concepts in a principled and rational way. 5
It has been eighty-eight years since Judge Learned Hand identified two practical defects with a system depending on a conflict between expert witnesses in front of a lay...
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