Affirm Dismissal of Lexapro Case: WLF

In an amicus brief filed with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) says the court should affirm a New York federal court’s dismissal of a suit brought by six women against Forest Laboratories over its antidepressant drug Lexapro (escitalopram). In their suit, the women said they took the drug while they were pregnant and it caused their children to develop autism spectrum disorder.

“Because plaintiffs adduced no admissible, reliable evidence to prove general causation,” WLF says in its brief, “the district court granted summary judgment and dismissed plaintiffs’ claims. That judgment should be affirmed.”

The case revolves around Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the types of expert testimony and scientific evidence that are admissible in a suit. WLF says the plaintiffs claim the district court took “too rigid an approach” to the rule’s reliability criteria. “The Federal Rules of Evidence are not mere suggestions,” the advocacy group says. “Rule 702 requires federal trial courts to take a hard look at each expert’s methodology…. At bottom, plaintiffs invite the court to disregard Rule 702 by relaxing their burden to present scientifically reliable expert testimony derived from reliably applied methodologies. Yet doing so would not only discard Rule 702 and decades of Supreme Court precedent but, given the highly inconsistent and unreliable approach to causation employed by plaintiffs’ experts here, also inject harmful uncertainty well beyond this case.”

WLF expresses a fear that if the court were to dilute the district court’s Rule 702 gatekeeping duty by, for example, deciding that methodological flaws in an expert’s opinion bear upon the weight it should be given rather than its admissibility, “then the judiciary’s ability to produce a fair and just result will be severely eroded.”