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For those of us who spend large chunks of our professional lives in mass tort MDLs, expressions like “settlement inventory” are ubiquitous. It is too easy to lose sight of the fact that these expressions put the rabbit in the hat, assuming that resourceful plaintiff lawyers will necessarily queue up for settlement payments at the end of the day and disregarding the fact that plaintiffs are supposed to be able to prove injury and causation before money changes hands.  And so we were especially pleased to read last week’s decisions in the Lipitor MDL, in which the  cautious and relentlessly thorough MDL  judge granted defendant Pfizer’s omnibus summary judgment motion, dismissing all but a single newly-filed case, because the plaintiffs could not meet their burden of proving that Lipitor caused their diabetes.  (There are two decisions relating to different dosages of Lipitor.  You can read them here and here.)

The Lipitor MDL, created in February 2014, centralized cases in which female plaintiffs alleged that Lipitor – prescribed in dosages of 10 mg., 20 mg., 40 mg., and 80 mg. – caused them to develop Type 2 diabetes.  In March and April of 2015, as trials of two bellwether cases approached, the plaintiffs served common expert disclosures of general causation experts, followed, in May and June, 2015, by specific causation expert disclosure in the two bellwether cases.  After full expert discovery, Pfizer moved to exclude all of these experts.  Ultimately, the court excluded the plaintiffs’ expert testimony on general causation with respect to Lipitor dosages of 10, 20, and 40 mg.  The court  also excluded the testimony of the bellwether plaintiffs’ specific causation experts, finding that the experts failed to rule out other possible causes of diabetes and relied impermissibly on temporal relationships, and granted summary judgment  for Pfizer on the claims of both bellwether plaintiffs.  (You can read our posts on these Daubert decisions here and here.)

However, the court left one general causation “window” open, based on one study finding that it was more likely than not that patients with certain characteristics who took 80 mg of Lipitor would not have developed diabetes in the absence of Lipitor. Thus, though neither of the bellwether plaintiffs had the requisite characteristics, it was possible that a plaintiff existed who took Lipitor at the 80 mg dosage and who could proffer a specific causation opinion that would survive Daubert.Continue Reading Lipitor MDL Court Grants Pfizer’s Omnibus Summary Judgment Motion: No Evidence of Causation

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This week, as Drug and Device Law Jews, we are preparing for Passover, which, like most Jewish holidays, begins with a multi-generational dinner at the home of the Drug and Device Law Bubbie (our mother). Although we of the second generation (there are now four) still fancy ourselves to be the “kids’ table” at this dinner – giggling at the solemn points of the reading, singing endless choruses of our favorite Passover song in defiance of the “just one time” edict, and generally disrupting the proceedings as much as possible – the reality is that we are all upper-middle-aged adults. And, as our matriarch ages (at least on paper), we assume more and more of the food preparation for the Seder dinner. And there’s the rub. For, much as we would enjoy the occasional stroke of rogue creativity, we know that nothing unfamiliar will be allowed on the table and that each of the traditional dishes must taste exactly as it has tasted for the past 50-plus (if not 2,000) years. Every ingredient and every step of preparation is subject to scrutiny, and Bubbie is the gatekeeper. (You know where this is going).

As everyone knows, under SCOTUS’s Daubert decision, the trial court is the gatekeeper when it comes to admitting or excluding the testimony of expert witnesses. We who practice in the mass tort space have gratefully experienced judges who take this responsibility seriously and have endured those who “punt” these determinations, nearly always to the benefit of plaintiffs whose dime-store experts – lacking qualifications, methodologies, or both – are permitted to peddle their wares to unsuspecting juries.

The Lipitor MDL judge falls resoundingly into the former camp. In In re Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices, and Prods. Liab. Litig., 2016 WL 1251828 (D.S. C. Mar. 30, 2016), considered the defendant’s Daubert motions addressed to the plaintiffs’ four causation experts, and wholly or partially excluded all four. But there is backstory. Lipitor is prescribed in four different doses – 10 mg, 20 mg, 40 mg, and 80 mg. This is an MDL, so our readers can guess which doses most of these plaintiffs took. While several studies show a statistically significant association between higher doses and new-onset diabetes, none shows such an association at the lowest dose. After the plaintiffs’ experts submitted their initial reports, the court “was concerned as to whether Plaintiffs’ experts had sufficient facts and data to support their causation opinions at all doses . . . , and even whether the experts would be willing to offer an opinion at low doses, given the available data.” In re Lipitor, 2016 WL 1251828 at *3. Over the defendant’s objections, the court allowed all four of the plaintiffs’ experts to submit supplemental reports addressing whether the drug caused diabetes at particular doses. Id. at *5. The defendant’s Daubert motions followed submission of the supplemental reports.Continue Reading Gutsy Gatekeeping: Plaintiffs’ Experts Excluded in Lipitor MDL

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