The Sixth Circuit earlier this month affirmed the exclusion of plaintiff expert testimony seeking to link osteonecrosis of the jaw to plaintiff’s use of two cancer medications. See Simmons v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., No. 11-5053 (6th Cir., 6/5/12).

Simmons developed osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ), a bone disease affecting the jaw, allegedly as a result of using the prescription medications Zometa and Aredia. He sued and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the action under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and assigned it to Chief Judge Todd Campbell.

To prove specific causation, plaintiff offered two experts. Plaintiff offered Dr. Obeid, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon who saw the plaintiff, and Dr. Edward Gutman an experienced oral surgeon. Defendant moved to exclude, inter alia, the testimony of Drs. Obeid and Gutman, on the issue of causation. The MDL court granted the motion to exclude any testimony by Dr. Obeid as
to the cause of Simmons’s injury, and by a separate order the district court granted defendant’s motion to exclude Dr. Gutman’s causation testimony. The court then granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on all of plaintiff’s claims because plaintiff no longer had proof of an essential element of a product-liability claim under Maryland law, i.e., specific causation. Plaintiff appealed.

The court of appeals noted that a treating physician’s testimony is subject to Daubert. See Gass v. Marriott Hotel Servs., Inc., 558 F.3d 419, 426 (6th Cir. 2009). Plaintiff was therefore required to demonstrate that Dr. Obeid’s reasoning or methodology was scientifically valid and that he properly applied that reasoning or methodology to the facts at issue. Plaintiff relied on Dr. Obeid’s statement that he found “a very close association” between ONJ and the class of drugs. However, Dr. Obeid also specifically acknowledged that he “didn’t establish causation” in evaluating Simmons’s ONJ.  Readers know that association is not causation.  Furthermore, Dr. Obeid agreed that the current level of evidence did not support a cause-and-effect relationship between bisphosphonate exposure and ONJ. While there were references to the medication in Dr. Obeid’s medical records, even if this was a “diagnosis,” a diagnosis is merely a hypothesis, which does not satisfy Daubert and Rule 702. Moreover, nowhere in his testimony did Dr. Obeid rule out other conditions as the sole cause of Simmons’ ONJ.

As to Dr. Gutman, the court noted that he had no knowledge of the etiologies of ONJ prior to meeting Simmons, and then gained only a limited familiarity based on literature supplied to him by plaintiff’s counsel. He had never treated any patients who were taking Aredia or Zometa or any other bisphosphonate, had never diagnosed a patient with ONJ, or determined a cause of
a patient’s ONJ.  Dr. Gutman admitted that he was not an expert on Zometa, Aredia, bisphosphonates, or ONJ, except as to Simmons’s case. He had no independent expertise from any other source other than six medical articles plaintiff’s counsel gave him; other than these
articles, there was no other “methodology” supporting his opinion.

The district court also did not abuse its discretion in excluding Dr. Gutman’s specific causation
opinion as unreliable because it was not derived from scientifically valid principles but
rather relied exclusively on the scientific literature provided by counsel. Dr. Gutman
made no attempt to verify this information, such as by doing his own research for other articles, and then drawing an independent conclusion. Courts view with special caution expert testimony prepared solely for purposes of litigation, rather than flowing from an expert’s line of scientific or technical work.

Exclusions upheld; summary judgment affirmed.

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