Seroquel Class Action MDL: Ruling on General Causation
Plaintiffs who filed Seroquel lawsuits finally got some good – albeit expected – news. Seroquel’s manufacturer will not be able to bar medical testimony on general causation of the link between Seroquel and weight gain and diabetes, a federal judge ruled.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers’ expert on Seroquel, the chairwoman of the epidemiology department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is expected to opine that Seroquel causes metabolic changes which can lead to diabetes without weight gain.
Honestly, I cannot imagine a scenario where general causation would be an issue. There really is not much legitimate dispute. The challenge that Plaintiffs’ Seroquel lawyers have had in the lawsuits that have gone forward is specific causation, whether diabetes was caused in the Plaintiff, as opposed to the general principle that Seroquel can cause diabetes.
As American Law Litigation Daily pointed out on Monday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Joseph Slights was pretty discouraging about the future of the Seroquel lawsuits in his recent opinion. The judge pointed out that in every Seroquel lawsuit, plaintiffs’ experts have been bounced on Daubert grounds. But you have to look at the facts of those specific cases (here and here). While plaintiffs’ Seroquel lawyers might have thought these were good cases to push forward, it is pretty clear that these were bad cases on the facts (it could have evolved that way in a way unknown to plaintiffs’ Seroquel lawyers.)
There are still 13,000 Seroquel lawsuits out there. There is a long way to go.
