The criticisms of corporate free speech are motivated, at bottom, over hostility to the views that would likely flow from corporate speech. In this age, it is a marvel that there is such hostility to free expression of ideas. We should be much more focused on validity and factual accuracy of arguments than on sponsorship. Sometimes, even the most biased sources manage to stumble upon the truth.
Still, sponsorship remains a major debating point for those who cannot or will not take the time to evaluate the merits of an issue. The Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) is, like many American corporations, a nonprofit organization, but it aspires to be a “research and educational organization.” The CPR’s principal aims deal with protecting health and safety against occupational and environmental harms. These are laudable goals even if the CPR is predictably a voice of entrenched interest groups, such as the litigation industry, also known as the plaintiffs’ tort bar.
One of the CPR’s key activities is “[d]efending clean science from political or corporate interference.” The CPR raises interesting questions about what is “clean,” and what is “dirty” science, and whether it is willing to defend science from all political and corporate interference, or only that interference with which it disagrees.
The American litigation industry is represented by a highly politicized “corporation,” the American Association for Justice (AAJ), previously known by the more revealing name, Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA®). The AAJ describes itself as a corporation, or a “collective,” that supports plaintiff trial lawyers as their “collective voice … on Capitol Hill and in courthouses across the nation … .” The Robert A. Habush Foundation is endowed by the AAJ, and serves as an educational mission. Through the Habush Foundation, the AAJ funds educational programs, “think tanks,” and writing projects designed to influence judges, law professors, lawyers, and the public, on issues of importance to the AAJ: “the civil justice system and individual rights” for bigger, better, and more profitable litigation outcomes.
Of the two organizations, the CPR, and the AAJ/ATLA, the CPR has the more disinterested stance, in theory. The AAJ may be a “not-for-profit,” but it represents the interests of one of the most powerful, and wealthiest, interest groups in American society — the plaintiffs’ bar.
Last May, the CPR sponsored a symposium in Washington D.C. on one of the most controversial, and reactionary decisions involving federal gatekeeping of expert witness testimony, Milward v. Acuity Specialty Products Group, Inc., 664 F.Supp. 2d 137 (D. Mass. 2009), rev’d, 639 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 2011), cert. denied, U.S. Steel Corp. v. Milward, ___ U.S. ___, 2012 WL 33303 (2012). The CPR’s interest in the Milward decision is clear. One of CPR’s member “scholars,” Carl Cranor, was a partisan expert witness in Milward. The trial court had excluded Cranor’s testimony; a panel of the First Circuit of the Court of Appeals reversed and ordered that Cranor and the plaintiffs’ other expert witnesses be heard at trial. See Milward — Unhinging the Courthouse Door to Dubious Scientific Evidence (Sept. 2, 2011); WOE-fully Inadequate Methodology – An Ipse Dixit By Another Name (May 2, 2012). The Milward decision embraced a vacuous methodology sometimes called “weight of the evidence” (WOE) or “inference to the best explanation,” which had been previously rejected by other Circuits, as well as by the United States Supreme Court, in General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997).
The agenda for the symposium, “Toxic Tort Litigation after Milward v. Acuity Specialty Products,” reflects the CPR’s role, in conjunction with the Wake Forest Journal of Law and Public Policy, in sponsoring the event. The connection between the CPR and Wake Forest Law School may not be obvious. CPR board member, Sid Shapiro, is a law professor at Wake Forest. Shapiro and CPR member Thomas McGarity presented at the symposium. So did Professor Steve Gold, who has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Milward decision. Law professors Michael Green and Joseph Sanders also presented. There was only one practicing lawyer involved in the symposium, Texas plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steve Jensen, of Allen Stewart, P.C. Mr. Jensen is a past chair of the AAJ’s Section on Toxic, Environmental, and Pharmaceutical Torts.
No defense counsel participated.
The proceedings of the Milward symposium will be published in an upcoming issue (volume 3, no. 1) of the Wake Forest Journal of Law and Public Policy. This issue is scheduled to include papers from the presenters, along with one additional author, Carl Cranor.
The website of the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy describes the symposium:
In Milward v. Acuity Products, 639 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 2011), the First Circuit became the first court – either federal or state – to allow a “weight of the evidence” methodology for assessing causation in a toxic tort case. The plaintiff had alleged that exposure to defendant’s benzene-containing products caused his rare leukemia (Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (“APL”)). His expert witness, a leading toxicologist and expert on benzene, surveyed five lines of scientific evidence from the peer-reviewed literature, and concluded the available evidence, taken as a whole, supported the inference that benzene exposure can cause APL. The lower court, following a common post-Daubert approach, excluded the testimony “because no one line of evidence supported a reliable inference of causation, [and] an inference of causation based on the totality of the evidence was unreliable.” The First Circuit rejected this “atomistic” approach, noting that the district court did not have the authority to exclude evidence because reasonable experts may disagree about what it means.
This symposium will explore the implications of Milward for toxic tort litigation in the federal and state courts, including whether it correctly applies Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509, U.S. 579 (1993). * * * Speakers are invited to comment on any aspect on Milward that they find interesting and important, including the following issues:
- What role does the weight of the evidence methodology play in scientific risk assessment, and what are the implications of this role for tort litigation?
- Should well-founded testimony based on a weight of the evidence methodology be admissible in toxic tort litigation? Does the Restatement of Torts (Third) § 28 cmt. c concerning the role of scientific judgment in adjudicating general causation support the admissibility of such testimony?
- Does the reliance of regulatory agencies, such as EPA, on a weight of the evidence methodology for purposes of regulating toxic chemicals support the result in Milward? Or are there differences in the legal and policy judgments being made by regulators and judges that distinguish regulatory agencies from courts?
- What are the legal and policy implications of Milward for the future of toxic tort litigation?
The Journal also notes the sponsorship of the CPR, and, in a cryptic paragraph, reports that
“CPR thanks the Robert L. Habush Foundation for its support of the symposium.”
Most casual readers will not likely recognize the Habush foundation for what it is: an arm of AAJ/ATLA. I suppose it was too painful for Wake Forest or the CPR to acknowledge openly that the litigation industry itself supported this symposium. Some may find irony in the CPR’s past criticism of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), when its current status as a conduit for litigation industry money to support scholarship in that industry’s interests. See Daniel Farber, “Of the Corporations, By the Corporations, For the Corporations? The Meaning of the Citizens United Decision” (Jan. 21, 2010).
Professor Steve Gold’s paper, “When Certainty Dissolves into Probability: A Legal Vision of Toxic Causation for the Post-Genomic Era,” has been posted at the Social Science Research Network. Steve Jensen’s contribution to the symposium has been published as well, in the AAJ’s trade journal. Steve Baughman Jensen, “Reframing the Daubert Issue in Toxic Tort Cases,” Trial (Feb. 2013).
