Acetaminophen Part 5 – 2d Circuit 2d Guesses MDL Trial Judge
On July 13, 2026, in an opinion by Senior Judge Guido Calebresi, the Second Circuit delivered its opinion. Given Judge Calebresi’s confusion at oral argument, between causation and association, and his...
View ArticleFiber Follies
As with any potential toxic exposure, the dose and duration of exposure of asbestos matter. And these factors matter varyingly in connection to specific outcomes of interest. By 1930, virtually...
View ArticleAcetaminophen – Lobbying the Court – Part 4
Appellate advocates are limited to trial court records. The judgment winner may raise arguments, based upon those factual records, which would support the judgment, whether they raised or made the...
View ArticleAcetaminophen – Distortion of Scientific Publication – Part 3
Both in acetaminophen litigation and in performative political assertion, the Prada Review has loomed large. As noted in an earlier post, one of the authors of the Prada Review was Andrea Baccarelli,...
View ArticleAcetaminophen – Partisan Politics Corrupts Scientific Assessments – Part 2
Most medico-legal controversies over causation resolve in the pages of medical journals and within the walls of state and federal courthouses. The claim that pregnant women’s ingestion of acetaminophen...
View ArticleAcetaminophen – No Cure for Bad Jurisprudence – Part 1
INTRODUCTION Two weeks ago, the Second Circuit reversed the summary judgment entered by Judge Denise Cote, in the acetaminophen autism litigation. Judge Cote had excluded the plaintiffs’ expert...
View ArticleThe Recrudescence of Ferebee – Part Two
In 2010, almost 30 years after Ferebee was decided, the Solicitor General cited the case in an amicus brief before the Supreme Court case, in Matrixx Iniatives, Inc. v. Siracusano. The case was a...
View ArticleThe Recrudescence of Ferebee – Part One
The infamous Ferebee decision is certainly a contender to be a Dred Scott decision involving scientific evidence,[1] by declaring that science has no validity issues that the law is bound to...
View ArticleBIAS EVERYWHERE
For those of us who litigate health effects claims, either as pursuers or defenders, the pathology of science is often as important and interesting as pristine methodology. Identifying the pathological...
View ArticleThe American Public Health Association – Lawsuit Industry Affiliate
Over a decade ago, I wrote a post about the American Public Health Association (APHA) and its position papers opposing the Daubert regime of gatekeeping the validity of expert witness opinion...
View ArticleIARC & the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence
Given the outsized role that IARC can sometimes take in litigation and regulation, lawyers and judges should pay some attention to, and give some critical thought about, how the Reference Manual on...
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A Bayesian Toehold in the New Reference Guide to Epidemiology
The most recent edition of the Reference Manual on epidemiology distinguishes more carefully between Bayesian and frequentist approaches to statistical analyses than did its previous iterations. In...
View ArticleHow Science Works in the New Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence
The Second and Third Editions of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contained a chapter, “How Science Works,” by Professor David Goodstein. This chapter ambitiously set out to cover philosophy...
View ArticleReference Manual’s Chapter on Expert Witness Testimony Admissibility – Part 5
By ignoring Milward’s expert witnesses’ omissions from, and abridgements of, WOE and IBE, the appellate court blinded itself to these witnesses’ distortions of scientific method. The need for judgment,...
View ArticleReference Manual’s Chapter on Expert Witness Testimony Admissibility – Part 4
In the district court, Judge George O’Toole conducted a pre-trial hearing over four days, and heard testimony from Smith and Cranor, as well as from defense expert witnesses. Judge O’Toole’s published...
View ArticleReference Manual’s Chapter on Expert Witness Testimony Admissibility – Part 3
Richter and Capra treat WOE in Justice Steven’s lone dissenting opinion in Joiner as if it were the law. Of course, it was not; nor was it a particularly insightful analysis into scientific method,...
View ArticleThe Fourth Edition’s Chapter on Admissibility of Expert Witness Testimony –...
The Manual’s new law chapter on the admissibility (vel non) of expert witness testimony was written by two law professors who teach evidence, and who often write articles with each another.[1] Liesa...
View ArticleThe Reference Manual’s Chapter on Expert Witness Testimony Admissibility –...
With the retraction of the climate science chapter, The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence is now one chapter shorter, at least in the Federal Judicial Center’s version. At the time of this...
View ArticleThe First Daubert Motion
As every school child knows, or at least every law student in the United States knows, Daubert was a Bendectin case. The plaintiff claimed that his mother’s use of Bendectin, a prescription anti-nausea...
View ArticleThe FJC Retracts Climate Science – Postscriptum
The version of the Reference Manual on the NASEM website still has the climate science chapter. The FJC website has a version without the climate science chapter. There is a note that the chapter was...
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