Expert Witness Blog
Oral argument Tuesday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals centered on a pharmacology expert witness who contends the acne drug Accutane causes inflammatory bowel disease. DailyReportOnline.com writes:
Three trials over an alleged link between the acne drug Accutane and serious gastrointestinal problems have resulted in verdicts of more than $20 million in New Jersey and Florida state courts. Hundreds of other such cases have been filed in New Jersey, and several of those are scheduled for trial this fall. But at oral argument Tuesday at the federal appeals court in Atlanta, it looked like plaintiffs proceeding in federal court may have a much harder time….
Arguing for the drug company defendants, Paul W. Schmidt of Covington & Burling in Washington argued that a key flaw in the expert’s approach was that he homed in on select evidence, making “leaps of faith based on these data points.”