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Statistical Deontology

March 2nd, 2018

In courtrooms across America, there has been a lot of buzzing and palavering about the American Statistical Association’s Statement on Statistical Significance Testing,1 but very little discussion of the Society’s Ethical Guidelines, which were updated and promulgated in the same year, 2016. Statisticians and statistics, like lawyers and the law, receive their fair share of calumny over their professional activities, but the statistician’s principal North American professional organization is trying to do something about members’ transgressions.

The American Statistical Society (ASA) has promulgated ethical guidelines for statisticians, as has the Royal Statistical Society,2 even if these organizations lack the means and procedures to enforce their codes. The ASA’s guidelines3 are rich with implications for statistical analyses put forward in all contexts, including in litigation and regulatory rule making. As such, the guidelines are well worth studying by lawyers.

The ASA Guidelines were prepared by the Committee on Professional Ethics, and approved by the ASA’s Board in April 2016. There are lots of “thou shall” and “thou shall nots,” but I will focus on the issues that are more likely to arise in litigation. What is remarkable about the Guidelines is that if followed, they probably are more likely to eliminate unsound statistical practices in the courtroom than the ASA State on P-values.

Defining Good Statistical Practice

“Good statistical practice is fundamentally based on transparent assumptions, reproducible results, and valid interpretations.” Guidelines at 1. The Guidelines thus incorporate something akin to the Kumho Tire standard that an expert witness ‘‘employs in the courtroom the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the practice of an expert in the relevant field.’’ Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 152 (1999).

A statistician engaged in expert witness testimony should provide “only expert testimony, written work, and oral presentations that he/she would be willing to have peer reviewed.” Guidelines at 2. “The ethical statistician uses methodology and data that are relevant and appropriate, without favoritism or prejudice, and in a manner intended to produce valid, interpretable, and reproducible results.” Id. Similarly, the statistician, if ethical, will identify and mitigate biases, and use analyses “appropriate and valid for the specific question to be addressed, so that results extend beyond the sample to a population relevant to the objectives with minimal error under reasonable assumptions.” Id. If the Guidelines were followed, a lot of spurious analyses would drop off the litigation landscape, regardless whether they used p-values or confidence intervals, or a Bayesian approach.

Integrity of Data and Methods

The ASA’s Guidelines also have a good deal to say about data integrity and statistical methods. In particular, the Guidelines call for candor about limitations in the statistical methods or the integrity of the underlying data:

“The ethical statistician is candid about any known or suspected limitations, defects, or biases in the data that may impact the integrity or reliability of the statistical analysis. Objective and valid interpretation of the results requires that the underlying analysis recognizes and acknowledges the degree of reliability and integrity of the data.”

Guidelines at 3.

The statistical analyst openly acknowledges the limits of statistical inference, the potential sources of error, as well as the statistical and substantive assumptions made in the execution and interpretation of any analysis,” including data editing and imputation. Id. The Guidelines urge analysts to address potential confounding not assessed by the study design. Id. at 3, 10. How often do we see these acknowledgments in litigation-driven analyses, or in peer-reviewed papers, for that matter?

Affirmative Actions Prescribed

In the aid of promoting data and methodological integrity, the Guidelines also urge analysts to share data when appropriate without revealing the identities of study participants. Statistical analysts should publicly correct any disseminated data and analyses in their own work, as well as working to “expose incompetent or corrupt statistical practice.” Of course, the Lawsuit Industry will call this ethical duty “attacking the messenger,” but maybe that’s a rhetorical strategy based upon an assessment of risks versus benefits to the Lawsuit Industry.

Multiplicity

The ASA Guidelines address the impropriety of substantive statistical errors, such as:

“[r]unning multiple tests on the same data set at the same stage of an analysis increases the chance of obtaining at least one invalid result. Selecting the one “significant” result from a multiplicity of parallel tests poses a grave risk of an incorrect conclusion. Failure to disclose the full extent of tests and their results in such a case would be highly misleading.”

Guidelines at 9.

There are some Lawsuit Industrialists who have taken comfort in the pronouncements of Kenneth Rothman on corrections for multiple comparisons. Rothman’s views on multiple comparisons are, however, much broader and more nuanced than the Industry’s sound bites.4 Given that Rothman opposes anything like strict statistical significance testing, it follows that he is relatively unmoved for the need for adjustments to alpha or the coefficient of confidence. Rothman, however, has never deprecated the need to consider the multiplicity of testing, and the need for researchers to be forthright in disclosing the the scope of comparisons originally planned and actually done.

2 Royal Statistical Society – Code of Conduct (2014); Steven Piantadosi, Clinical Trials: A Methodologic Perspective 609 (2d ed. 2005).

3 Shelley Hurwitz & John S. Gardenier, “Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice: The First 60 Years and Beyond,” 66 Am. Statistician 99 (2012) (describing the history and evolution of the Guidelines).

4 Kenneth J. Rothman, “Six Persistent Research Misconceptions,” 29 J. Gen. Intern. Med. 1060, 1063 (2014).

Posted in Data Sharing, Expert Witness Discovery, Scientific Misconduct, statistical evidence, Underlying Data | Comments Off on Statistical Deontology

Failed Gatekeeping in Ambrosini v. Labarraque (1996)

December 28th, 2017

The Ambrosini case straddled the Supreme Court’s 1993 Daubert decision. The case began before the Supreme Court clarified the federal standard for expert witness gatekeeping, and ended in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, after the high court adopted the curious notion that scientific claims should be based upon reliable evidence and valid inferences. That notion has only slowly and inconsistently trickled down to the lower courts.

Given that Ambrosini was litigated in the District of Columbia, where the docket is dominated by regulatory controversies, frequently involving dubious scientific claims, no one should be surprised that the D.C. Court of Appeals did not see that the Supreme Court had read “an exacting standard” into Federal Rule of Evidence 702. And so, we see, in Ambrosini, this Court of Appeals citing and purportedly applying its own pre-Daubert decision in Ferebee v. Chevron Chem. Co., 552 F. Supp. 1297 (D.D.C. 1982), aff’d, 736 F.2d 1529 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1062 (1984).1 In 2000, the Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was revised in a way that extinguishes the precedential value of Ambrosini and the broad dicta of Ferebee, but some courts and commentators have failed to stay abreast of the law.

Escolastica Ambrosini was using a synthetic progestin birth control, Depo-Provera, as well as an anti-nausea medication, Bendectin, when she became pregnant. The child that resulted from this pregnancy, Teresa Ambrosini, was born with malformations of her face, eyes, and ears, cleft lip and palate, and vetebral malformations. About three percent of all live births in the United States have a major malformation. Perhaps because the Divine Being has sovereign immunity, Escolastica sued the manufacturers of Bendectin and Depo-Provera, as well as the prescribing physician.

The causal claims were controversial when made, and they still are. The progestin at issue, medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), was embryotoxic in the cynomolgus monkey2, but not in the baboon3. The evidence in humans was equivocal at best, and involved mostly genital malformations4; the epidemiologic evidence for the MPA causal claim to this day remains unconvincing5.

At the close of discovery in Ambrosini, Upjohn (the manufacturer of the progestin) moved for summary judgment, with a supporting affidavit of a physician and geneticist, Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson. In his affidavit, Simpson discussed three epidemiologic studies, as well as other published papers, in support of his opinion that the progestin at issue did not cause the types of birth defects manifested by Teresa Ambrosini.

Ambrosini had disclosed two expert witnesses, Dr. Allen S. Goldman and Dr. Brian Strom. Neither Goldman nor Strom bothered to identify the papers, studies, data, or methodology used in arriving at an opinion on causation. Not surprisingly, the district judge was unimpressed with their opposition, and granted summary judgment for the defendant. Ambrosini v. Labarraque, 966 F.2d 1462, 1466 (D.C. Cir. 1992).

The plaintiffs appealed on the remarkable ground that Goldman’s and Strom’s crypto-evidence satisfied Federal Rule of Evidence 703. Even more remarkably, the Circuit, in a strikingly unscholarly opinion by Judge Mikva, opined that disclosure of relied-upon studies was not required for expert witnesses under Rules 703 and 705. Judge Mikva seemed to forget that the opinions being challenged were not given in testimony, but in (late-filed) affidavits that had to satisfy the requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. Id. at 1468-69. At trial, an expert witness may express an opinion without identifying its bases, but of course the adverse party may compel disclosure of those bases. In discovery, the proffered expert witness must supply all opinions and evidence relied upon in reach the opinions. In any event, the Circuit remanded the case for a hearing and further proceedings, at which the two challenged expert witnesses, Goldman and Strom, would have to identify the bases of their opinions. Id. at 1471.

Not long after the case landed back in the district court, the Supreme Court decided Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). With an order to produce entered, plaintiffs’ counsel could no longer hide Goldman and Strom’s evidentiary bases, and their scientific inferences came under judicial scrutiny.

Upjohn moved again to exclude Goldman and Strom’s opinions. The district court upheld Upjohn’s challenges, and granted summary judgment in favor of Upjohn for the second time. The Ambrosinis appealed again, but the second case in the D.C. Circuit resulted in a split decision, with the majority holding that the exclusion of Goldman and Strom’s opinions under Rule 702 was erroneous. Ambrosini v. Labarraque, 101 F.3d 129 (D.C. Cir. 1996).

Although issued two decades ago, the majority’s opinion remains noteworthy as an example of judicial resistance to the existence and meaning of the Supreme Court’s Daubert opinion. The majority opinion uncritically cited the notorious Ferebee6 and other pre-Daubert decisions. The court embraced the Daubert dictum about gatekeeping being limited to methodologic consideration, and then proceeded to interpret methodology as superficially as necessary to sustain admissibility. If an expert witness claimed to have looked at epidemiologic studies, and epidemiology was an accepted methodology, then the opinion of the expert witness must satisfy the legal requirements of Daubert, or so it would seem from the opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Despite the majority’s hand waving, a careful reader will discern that there must have been substantial gaps and omissions in the explanations and evidence cited by plaintiffs’ expert witnesses. Seeing anything clearly in the Circuit’s opinion is made difficult, however, by careless and imprecise language, such as its descriptions of studies as showing, or not showing “causation,” when it could have meant only that such studies showed associations, with more or less random and systematic error.

Dr. Strom’s report addressed only general causation, and even so, he apparently did not address general causation of the specific malformations manifested by the plaintiffs’ child. Strom claimed to have relied upon the “totality of the data,” but his methodologic approach seems to have required him to dismiss studies that failed to show an association.

“Dr. Strom first set forth the reasoning he employed that led him to disagree with those studies finding no causal relationship [sic] between progestins and birth defects like Teresa’s. He explained that an epidemiologist evaluates studies based on their ‘statistical power’. Statistical power, he continued, represents the ability of a study, based on its sample size, to detect a causal relationship. Conventionally, in order to be considered meaningful, negative studies, that is, those which allege the absence of a causal relationship, must have at least an 80 to 90 percent chance of detecting a causal link if such a link exists; otherwise, the studies cannot be considered conclusive. Based on sample sizes too small to be reliable, the negative studies at issue, Dr. Strom explained, lacked sufficient statistical power to be considered conclusive.”

Id. at 1367.

Putting aside the problem of suggesting that an observational study detects a “causal relationship,” as opposed to an association in need of further causal evaluation, the Court’s précis of Strom’s testimony on power is troublesome, and typical of how other courts have misunderstood and misapplied the concept of statistical power. Statistical power is a probability of observing an association of a specified size at a specified level of statistical significance. The calculation of statistical power turns indeed on sample size, the level of significance probability preselected for “statistical significance, an assumed probability distribution of the sample, and, critically, an alternative hypothesis. Without a specified alternative hypothesis, the notion of statistical power is meaningless, regardless of what probability (80% or 90% or some other percentage) is sought for finding the alternative hypothesis. Furthermore, the notion that the defense must adduce studies with “sufficient statistical power to be considered conclusive” creates an unscientific standard that can never be met, while subverting the law’s requirement that the claimant establish causation.

The suggestion that the studies that failed to find an association cannot be considered conclusive because they “lacked sufficient statistical power” is troublesome because it distorts and misapplies the very notion of statistical power. No attempt was made to describe the confidence intervals surrounding the point estimates of the null studies; nor was there any discussion whether the studies could be aggregated to increase their power to rule out meaningful associations.

The Circuit court’s scientific jurisprudence was thus seriously flawed. Without a discussion of the end points observed, the relevant point estimates of risk ratios, and the confidence intervals, the reader cannot assess the strength of the claims made by Goldman and Strom, or by defense expert Simpson, in their reports. Without identifying the study endpoints, the reader cannot evaluate whether the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses relied upon relevant outcomes in formulating their opinions. The court viewed the subject matter from 30,000 feet, passing over at 600 mph, without engagement or care. A strong dissent, however, suggested serious mischaracterizations of the plaintiffs’ evidence by the majority.

The only specific causation testimony to support plaintiff’s claims came from Goldman, in what appears to have been a “differential etiology.” Goldman purported to rule out a genetic cause, even though he had not conducted a critical family history or ordered a state-of-the-art chromosomal study. Id. at 140. Of course, nothing in a differential etiology approach would allow a physician to rule out “unknown” causes, which, for birth defects, make up the most prevalent and likely causes to explain any particular case. The majority acknowledged that these were short comings, but rhetorically characterized them as substantive, not methodologic, and therefore as issues for cross-examination, not for consideration by a judicial gatekeeping. All this is magical thinking, but it continues to infect judicial approaches to specific causation. See, e.g., Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Jeep v. Crombie, 508 F. Supp. 2d 295, 311 (D.Vt. 2007) (citing Ambrosini for the proposition that “the possibility of uneliminated causes goes to weight rather than admissibility, provided that the expert has considered and reasonably ruled out the most obvious”). In Ambrosini, however, Dr. Goldman had not ruled out much of anything.

Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissented in a short, but pointed opinion that carefully marshaled the record evidence. Drs. Goldman and Strom had relied upon a study by Greenberg and Matsunaga, whose data failed to show a statistically significant association between MPA and cleft lip and palate, when the crucial issue of timing of exposure was taken into consideration. Ambrosini, 101 F.3d at 142.

Beyond the specific claims and evidence, Judge Henderson anticipated the subsequent Supreme Court decisions in Joiner, Kumho Tire, and Weisgram, and the year 2000 revision of Rule 702, in noting that the majority’s acceptance of glib claims to have used a “traditional methodology” would render Daubert nugatory. Id. at 143-45 (characterizing Strom and Goldman’s methodologies as “wispish”). Even more importantly, Judge Henderson refused to indulge the assumption that somehow the length of Goldman’s C.V. substituted for evidence that his methods satisfied the legal (or scientific) standard of reliability. Id.

The good news is that little or nothing in Ambrosini survives the 2000 amendment to Rule 702. The bad news is that not all federal judges seem to have noticed, and that some commentators continue to cite the case, as lovely.

Probably no commentator has promiscuously embraced Ambrosini as warmly as Carl Cranor, a philosopher, and occasional expert witness for the lawsuit industry, in several publications and presentations.8 Cranor has been particularly enthusiastic about Ambrosini’s approval of expert witness’s testimony that failed to address “the relative risk between exposed and unexposed populations of cleft lip and palate, or any other of the birth defects from which [the child] suffers,” as well as differential etiologies that exclude nothing.9 Somehow Cranor, as did the majority in Ambrosini, believes that testimony that fails to identify the magnitude of the point estimate of relative risk can “assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.”10 Of course, without that magnitude given, the trier of fact could not evaluate the strength of the alleged association; nor could the trier assess the probability of individual causation to the plaintiff. Cranor also has written approvingly of lumping unrelated end points, which defeats the assessment of biological plausibility and coherence by the trier of fact. When the defense expert witness in Ambrosini adverted to the point estimates for relevant end points, the majority, with Cranor’s approval, rejected the null findings as “too small to be significant.”11 If the null studies were, in fact, too small to be useful tests of the plaintiffs’ claims, intellectual and scientific honesty required an acknowledgement that the evidentiary display was not one from which a reasonable scientist would draw a causal conclusion.

1Ambrosini v. Labarraque, 101 F.3d 129, 138-39 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (citing and applying Ferebee), cert. dismissed sub nom. Upjohn Co. v. Ambrosini, 117 S.Ct. 1572 (1997) See also David E. Bernstein, “The Misbegotten Judicial Resistance to the Daubert Revolution,” 89Notre Dame L. Rev. 27, 31 (2013).

2 S. Prahalada, E. Carroad, M. Cukierski, and A.G. Hendrickx, “Embryotoxicity of a single dose of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) and maternal serum MPA concentrations in cynomolgus monkey (Macaca fascicularis),” 32 Teratology 421 (1985).

3 S. Prahalada, E. Carroad, and A.G. Hendrick, “Embryotoxicity and maternal serum concentrations of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) in baboons (Papio cynocephalus),” 32 Contraception 497 (1985).

4 See, e.g., Z. Katz, M. Lancet, J. Skornik, J. Chemke, B.M. Mogilner, and M. Klinberg, “Teratogenicity of progestogens given during the first trimester of pregnancy,” 65 Obstet Gynecol. 775 (1985); J.L. Yovich, S.R. Turner, and R. Draper, “Medroxyprogesterone acetate therapy in early pregnancy has no apparent fetal effects,” 38 Teratology 135 (1988).

5 G. Saccone, C. Schoen, J.M. Franasiak, R.T. Scott, and V. Berghella, “Supplementation with progestogens in the first trimester of pregnancy to prevent miscarriage in women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials,” 107 Fertil. Steril. 430 (2017).

6 Ferebee v. Chevron Chemical Co., 736 F.2d 1529, 1535 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1062 (1984).

7 Dr. Strom was also quoted as having provided a misleading definition of statistical significance: “whether there is a statistically significant finding at greater than 95 percent chance that it’s not due to random error.” Ambrosini at 101 F.3d at 136. Given the majority’s inadequate description of the record, the description of witness testimony may not be accurate, and error cannot properly be allocated.

8 Carl F. Cranor, Toxic Torts: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice 320, 327-28 (2006); see also Carl F. Cranor, Toxic Torts: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice 238 (2d ed. 2016).

9 Carl F. Cranor, Toxic Torts: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice 320 (2006).

10 Id.

11 Id. ; see also Carl F. Cranor, Toxic Torts: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice 238 (2d ed. 2016).

Posted in Causation, Expert Witness Discovery, Rule 702, Rule 703, Scientific Evidence, statistical evidence, Statistical Power | Comments Off on Failed Gatekeeping in Ambrosini v. Labarraque (1996)

Echeverria Talc Trial – Crossexamination on Alleged Expert Witness Misconduct

October 21st, 2017

In a post-trial end-zone victory dance in Echeverria v. Johnson & Johnson, plaintiffs’ lawyer, Allen Smith proffered three explanations for the jury’s stunning $417 million verdict in his talc ovarian cancer case.1 One of the explanations asserted was Smith’s boast that he had adduced evidence that Johnson & Johnson’s expert witness on epidemiology, Douglas Weed, a former National Cancer Institute epidemiologist and physician, had been sanctioned in another, non-talc case in North Carolina, for lying under oath about whether he had notes to his expert report in that other case.2 Having now viewed Dr. Weed’s testimony3, through the Courtroom Video Network, I can evaluate Smith’s claim.

Weed’s allegedly perjurious testimony took place in Carter v. Fiber Composites LLC, 11 CVS 1355, N.C. Super. Ct., where he served as a party expert witness. In April 2014, Weed gave deposition testimony in the discovery phase of the Carter case. Although not served personally with a lawful subpoena, defense counsel had agreed to accept a subpoena for their expert witness to appear and produce documents, as was the local custom. In deposition, plaintiffs’ counsel asked Dr. Weed to produce any notes he created in the process of researching and writing his expert witness report. Dr. Weed testified that he had no notes. 

The parties disputed whether Dr. Weed had complied with a subpoena served upon defense counsel. The discovery dispute escalated and Dr. Weed obtained legal counsel, and submitted a sworn affidavit that denied the existence of notes. Plaintiffs’ counsel pressed on Dr. Weed’s understanding that he had no “notes.” In an Order, dated May 6, 2014, the trial court directed Dr. Weed to produce everything in his possession. In response to the order, Weed produced his calendar and a thumb drive with “small fragments of notes,” “inserts,” and “miscellaneous items.”

The North Carolina court did not take kindly to Dr. Weed’s confusion about whether his report “segments” and “inserts” were notes, or not. Dr. Weed viewed the segments and inserts to have been parts of his report, and later included within his report without any substantial change. The court concluded, however, that although Dr. Weed did not violate any court order, his assertion, in deposition, in an affidavit, and through legal counsel, was unreasonable, and directly related to his credibility in the Carter case. See Order Concerning Plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions Against Defendants and Non-Party Witness for Defendants (June 22, 2015) (Forrest D. Bridges, J.).

The upshot was that Dr. Weed and his counsel had provided false information to the court, on the court’s understanding of what had been requested in discovery. In the court’s view, Dr. Weed’s misunderstanding may have been understandable as a non-lawyer, but it was not reasonable for him to persist and have his counsel argue that there were no notes. The trial court specifically did not find that Dr. Weed had lied, as asserted by Allen Smith, but found that Weed’s conduct was undertaken intentionally or with reckless disregard of the truth, and that his testimony was an unacceptable violation of the oath to tell the whole truth. The trial court concluded that it could not sanction Dr. Weed personally, but its order specified that as a sanction, the plaintiffs’ counsel would be permitted to cross-examine Dr. Weed with the court’s findings and conclusions in the Carter case. Id. Not surprisingly, defense counsel withdrew Dr. Weed as an expert witness.

In the Echeverria case, the defense counsel did not object to the cross-examination; the video proceedings did not inform the viewers whether there had been a prior motion in limine concerning this examination. Allen Smith’s assertion about the North Carolina court’s findings was thus almost true. A cynic might say he too had not told the whole truth, but he did march Dr. Weed through Judge Bridges’ order of June 2015, which was displayed to the jury.

Douglas Weed handled the cross-examination about as well as possible. He explained on cross, and later on redirect, that he did not regard segments of his report, which were later incorporated into his report as served, to be notes. He pointed out that there was no information in the segments, which differed from the final report, or which was not included in the report. Smith’s cross-examination, however, had raised questions not so much about credibility (despite Judge Bridges’ findings), but about whether Dr. Weed was a “quibbler,” who would hide behind idiosyncratic understandings of important words such as “consistency.” Given how harmless the belatedly produced report fragments and segments were, we are left to wonder why Dr. Weed persisted in not volunteering them.

Smith’s confrontation of Dr. Weed with the order from the Carter case came at the conclusion of a generally unsuccessful cross-examination. Unlike the Slemp case, in which Smith appeared to be able to ask unfounded questions without restraint from the bench, in Echeverria, Smith drew repeated objections, which were frequently sustained. His response often was to ask almost the same question again, drawing the same objection and the same ruling. He sounded stymied and defeated.

Courtroom Video Network, of course, does not film the jurors, and so watching the streaming video of the trial offers no insights into how the jurors reacted in real time to Smith’s cross-examination. If Weed’s testimony was ignored or discredited by Smith’s cross-examination on the Carter order, then the Escheverria case cannot be considered a useful test of the plaintiffs’ causal claim. Dr. Weed had offered important testimony on methodological issues for conducting and interpreting studies, as well as inferring causation.

One of the peculiarities of the Slemp case was that the defense offered no epidemiologist in the face of two epidemiologists offered by the plaintiff. In Escheverria, the defense addressed this gap and went further to have its epidemiologist address the glaring problem of how any specific causal inference can be drawn from a risk ratio of 1.3. Dr. Weed explained attributable risk and probability of causation, and this testimony and many other important points went without cross-examination or contradiction. And yet, after finding general causation on a weak record, the jury somehow leaped over an insurmountable epistemic barrier on specific causation.

1 Amanda Bronstad, “New Evidence Seen as Key in LA Jury’s $417M Talc Verdict,” Law.com (Aug. 22, 2017).

3 The cross-examination at issue arose about one hour, nine minutes into Smith’s cross-examination, on Aug. 15, 2017.

Posted in Expert Witness Discovery, Expert Witnesses | Comments Off on Echeverria Talc Trial – Crossexamination on Alleged Expert Witness Misconduct

The LoGiudice Inquisitiorial Subpoena & Its Antecedents in N.Y. Law

July 14th, 2016

The plaintiffs’ bar’s inquisition into funding has been a recurring theme in the asbestos and other litigations.[1] It is thus interesting to compare the friendly reception Justice Moulton gave plaintiffs’ subpoena in LoGiudice[2] with the New York courts’ relatively recent hostility toward a defendant’s subpoena to Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

A few years ago, Justice Sherry Heitler quashed a defendant’s attempt to subpoena information from the archives of a deceased, former faculty member of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (“Mt. Sinai”), in Reyniak v. Barnstead Internat’l, No. 102688-08, 2010 NY Slip Op 50689, 2010 WL 1568424 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 6, 2010). In a cursory opinion, Justice Heitler cited institutional expense, chilling of research, and scholars’ fears that their unpublished notes, ideas, and observations would become public as a result of litigation. Heitler relied upon and followed an earlier New York state court’s decision that adopted a rather lopsided “balancing” analysis, which permitted the New York courts to ignore the legitimate needs of defendants for access to underlying data.[3]

Remarkably, Justice Heitler failed to cite a federal appellate court’s subsequent decision, which upheld the tobacco companies’ subpoena to Mount Sinai.[4] Her opinion also ignored the important context of the asbestos litigation, in which Selikoff, long since deceased, played a crucial role in fomenting and perpetuating litigation, with tendentious publications and pronouncements. Some might say, “manufacturing certainty.” Perpetuating the Litigation Industry’s Selikoff mythology, Justice Heitler described Selikoff as a ground breaking asbestos researcher, but she either ignored, or was ignorant of, his testimonial adventures, his attempts to influence litigation with ex parte meetings with presiding judges, and his other questionable litigation-related conduct.

Selikoff’s participation in litigation was not always above board.  His supposedly ground-breaking work was funded by the insulator’s union, which also sought him out as a testifying expert witness. Among his many testimonial adventures,[5] Selikoff testified as early as 1966 that asbestos causes colorectal cancer, and that it caused a specific claimant’s colorectal cancer. See “Health Hazard Progress Notes: Compensation Advance Made in New York State,” 16(5) Asbestos Worker 13 (May 1966) (thanking Selikoff for his having given testimony to support an insulator’s claim that asbestos caused his colorectal cancer). To be sure, Selikoff made his litigation claims in the scientific literature as well, but without any acknowledgement of his involving in litigation involving this very issue, and his funding by the asbestos union.[6]

Given the dubious provenance of many of Selikoff’s opinions,[7] the disparate treatment of the subpoenas in LoGuidice and Reyniak is irreconcilable. The inflated prestige of Selikoff and Mount Sinai blinded the New York state trial courts to Selikoff’s role in litigation and his biased assessments in science. The judicial hypocrisy may well be the consequence of how the academic community has promoted Selikoff’s reputation, while working assiduously to undermine the reputations of anyone who has been connected with the defense of occupational disease claims. Consider, for instance, how Labor (Marxist) historians have railed against the role that Dr. Anthony Lanza played in personal injury litigation following the Gauley Bridge tunnel construction.  See Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedale, “Anthony J. Lanza, Silicosis and the Gauley Bridge ‘Nine’,” 27 Social History of Medicine 86 (2013). While these historians deplore Lanza, however, they laud Selikoff. See “British Labor Historians Belaboring American Labor History – Gauley Bridge” (Oct. 14, 2013). Politics and occupational disease litigation are like that.

[1] See In re All Litigation filed by Maune, Raichle, Hartley, French & Mudd LLC v. 3M Co., No. 5-15-0235, Ill. App., 5th Dist.; 2016 Ill. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1392 (June 30, 2016); “Engineers for Automakers Must Unredact Agendas in Madison County Asbestos Litigation,” Madison County Record (July 2016); Lynn A. Lenhart, “Meeting Agendas Between Non-Party Consultant and Counsel for Asbestos Friction Clients Not Privileged” (July 5, 2016).  See also Weitz & Luxenberg P.C. v. Georgia-Pacific LLC, 2013 WL 2435565, 2013 NY Slip Op 04127 (June 6, 2013), aff’d, 2013 WL 2435565 (N.Y. App. Div., 1st Dep’t June 6, 2013); “A Cautionary Tale on How Not to Sponsor a Scientific Study for Litigation” (June 21, 2013).

[2] LoGiudice v. American Talc Co., No. 190253/2014, 2016 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2360, (N.Y. Sup., N.Y. Cty., June 20, 2016).

[3] See In re R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 136 Misc 2d 282, 285, 518 N.Y.S.2d 729 (Sup. Ct., N.Y. Cty. 1987); see also In re New York County Data Entry Worker Prod. Liab.Litig., No. 14003/92, 1994 WL 87529 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. Jan 31, 1994) (denying discovery because “special circumstances,” vaguely defined were absent).

[4] Mount Sinai School of Medicine v. The American Tobacco Co., 866 F.2d 552 (2d Cir. 1889).

[5] “Selikoff and the Mystery of the Disappearing Testimony” (Dec. 3, 2010).

[6] See, e.g., Irving J. Selikoff, “Epidemiology of gastrointestinal cancer,” 9 Envt’l Health Persp. 299 (1974) (arguing for his causal conclusion between asbestos and all gastrointestinal cancers).movie Her trailer

[7] See generally “Scientific Prestige, Reputation, Authority & The Creation of Scientific Dogmas” (Oct. 4, 2014); “Historians Should Verify Not Vilify or Abilify – The Difficult Case of Irving Selikoff” (Jan. 4, 2014).

Posted in Asbestos, Cognitive Biases, Conflicts of Interest, Expert Witness Discovery | Comments Off on The LoGiudice Inquisitiorial Subpoena & Its Antecedents in N.Y. Law

Whether to Conduct Depositions of Expert Witnesses

June 23rd, 2016

In a Litigation magazine article, Gregory Joseph sets out some strong reasons to consider for not conducting depositions of expert witnesses under the revised 2010 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). See Gregory P. Joseph, “The Temptation to Depose Every Expert,” 40 Litigation 35 (Winter 2014) [cited below as Joseph]. Joseph points out that FRCP 26(a)(2)(B) requires parties to disclose, for all retained expert witnesses, “all opinions” and the “full factual basis” of all their opinions, among other things. The rule is exacting. All opinions includes “a complete statement of all opinions the witness will express and the basis and reasons for them.” FRCP 26(a)(2)(B)(i). And a full factual basis includes “the facts or data considered by the witness in forming” all of the opinions disclosed in the report. FRCP 26(a)(2)(B)(ii) (emphasis added).

Joseph argues that the breadth of the required disclosure, combined with sanctions for retained expert witnesses’s attempting to testify beyond the four corners of their reports, should give lawyers sufficient assurances in many instances to forego conducting depositions of expert witnesses.

Joseph notes that the FRCP creates a presumptive mandatory sanction of exclusion for undisclosed expert testimony. FRCP 37(c)(1).[1]  Joseph offers other arguments beyond the supposed comfort given by the “four corners” rule set out in the FRCP. Joseph at 36-37. First, the deposition may “reopen” discovery by giving expert witnesses opportunities to expand upon the four corners of their reports. Although some courts will limit what expert witnesses can throw over the transom at depositions, a supervising magistrate or district judge may not regard the expansion upon the disclosures in the report as “sandbagging,” and thus fail exclude the arguably new opinions or bases. Joseph cites a few cases in which courts condemned the sandbagging of counsel by the offering of new opinions in depositions, but points out that exclusion is this circumstance is highly discretionary. The court is not required to exclude, and it may permit the new material, or allow the new material with an inadequate amount of additional time in deposition. So taking the deposition has risks.

Joseph argues also that depositions may educate expert witnesses about intended trial cross-examination, and help adversary counsel better prepare direct examination and anticipatory rebuttal. Furthermore, the new protections afforded expert witnesses from discovery into drafts of reports and most communications with retaining counsel take away one of the previous reasons to conduct depositions.

To be sure, some additional areas of discovery may be covered by interrogatories, Rule 34 document requests, or Rule 45 subpoenas directly to the expert witnesses. These non-deposition methods of discovery, however, will not reach valuable topics of discovery such as oral communications between retained expert witnesses and professional colleagues, consulting expert witnesses, the retaining lawyers’ clients, and other persons. The suggested alternative discovery methods also suffer in that they will provoke canned answers, written by counsel, and not the ingenuous, unrehearsed responses of expert witnesses required to give answers directly and without resort to  “privileged” consultation with retaining counsel.

The revised FRCP carve out important areas of inquiry from the new protections against discovery into draft reports and with counsel. Counsel still are permitted to inquire into compensation, the retaining attorneys’ provision of “facts or data” considered by the witnesses, and retaining attorneys’ identification of assumptions “relied” upon by the witnesses. Invoices can, of course, be subpoenaed, but often oral examination is required to discover whether the invoices have been paid, whether they are contingent, or whether payment flows to the personal benefit of the expert witnesses. Inquiring into what “facts or data” were provided by retaining counsel can be attempted by written discovery, but the written responses will likely be hedged and unclear, and the responses will not distinguish which lawyer-provided “facts or data” were actually relied upon.

The FRCP clearly allow discovery into retaining attorneys’ provision of assumptions relied upon by expert witnesses, but clear, unrehearsed answers to questions about what was assumed and relied upon, as opposed to merely considered, are not likely to be forthcoming in written discovery. Furthermore, if there will be any fair opportunity to explore the significance of relying upon counsel’s assumptions, only a deposition will likely allow for the extemporaneous, first-person expression of expert witnesses’ opinions. Questions into expert witnesses’ opinions based upon hypothetical questions that contradict the assumptions given, or into opinions about the level of confidence or knowledge witnesses have about the correctness of the assumptions, are likely to be effective only in face-to-face encounters.

There are important additional reasons for taking expert witness depositions, not addressed in Joseph’s article. Litigation-savvy expert witnesses will often glibly assert that they have “considered” all the relevant studies, data, and facts. If written discovery is propounded to inquire whether a study omitted from the “consideration” list in the FRCP report was not considered, the study, if meaningful, will be added to the list in the written response with a feeble excuse that it was inadvertently omitted from the list. And the omission will likely be judged harmless because the party seeking discovery obviously knew about the omitted study already. Written discovery into what studies, data, or facts were considered but not relied upon will also yield highly rehearsed answers, and interrogatories will not permit inquiries into the fine details of key studies.

The pertinent sections of the FRCP do not require expert witness reports to distinguish what the witnesses have considered from what they have actually relied upon. Written discovery could be propounded, but again, it will not likely yield clear answers such as might be had with follow up inquiry into what was considered but not relied upon, and why was reliance rejected. The deposition upon oral examination has the benefit of permitting follow up questions into why some studies were relied upon for some parts but not others, or were considered but completely excluded from actual reliance. The opportunity to field incoherent, inconsistent rationales for inclusions and exclusions that establish expert witness cherry picking will be lost without the face-to-face encounter allowed by oral examination.

With some courts engaged in retrograde refusal to apply Rule 702 as enacted, some expert witnesses have been encouraged to employ vague, invalid, and unreliable methodologies, such as the so-called “weight of the evidence” approach. Oral examination will be necessary to establish expert witnesses’ weighting considerations, their inclusion and exclusion criteria, and to test their consistency in applying these considerations and criteria, across the entire evidentiary base for conclusions.

Concessions to Be Obtained

Written discovery is not well suited to inquire into general principles of interpreting data and studies, data integrity and validity, and validity of inference.  Interrogatories are too difficult to draft in sufficient detail to permit setting up an examination that will lead to the disqualification of the expert witness under Rule 702.  Obtaining concise, clear concessions about basic methodological principles is crucial to structuring persuasive cross-examinations.  Of course, if the deponent balks at accepting generally accepted principles, then this testimony is filed under Rule 702 motion, rather than trial cross-examination.

Furthermore, written discovery is poorly suited to identify whether expert witnesses have subject-matter weaknesses.  Interrogatories are the wrong discovery tool to conduct pop-quizzes on arcane statistical and scientific methodologies. Lawyers rightfully do not want to get into show-game style quizzes to test expert witnesses’ understanding of the esoteric, but important, methodologies used in the studies relied upon, in front of a jury. Rule 26 reports rarely announce that witnesses have had no meaningful training in statistics and that they have no idea what assumptions were made in various statistical analyses or tests in the studies that they have embraced and relied upon for their opinions.

Expert witnesses have social and professional connections not always apparent from their curriculum vitae, their Rule 26 reports, or their websites. Expert witnesses are not likely, for instance, to disclose that they are Marxists, who believe that corporations are evil and mercenary, and cannot be trusted to tell the truth in litigation.[2]

As noted, the FRCP requires disclosure of facts or data considered, which disclosure is usually inadequate to permit distinguishing what was actually relied upon in forming opinions. But what about opinions considered or relied upon? FRCP does not address reliance upon opinions; nor does Rule 703. Expert witnesses may contend that their opinions are not “based upon” others’ opinions, but that their opinions are strengthened and corroborated by the opinions of others. The FRCP do not specifically call for disclosure of opinions relied upon by retained expert witnesses, and adversary counsel can be trusted to argue that there were no obligations to disclose opinions or the identity of “authoritative” treatises and publications. If there is no entitlement to disclosure, there can be no surprise and prejudice.

Interpreting the scope of the report may not be as clear as Joseph suggests.  Rule 26 reports usually contain some opinions with sufficient breadth and generality that foregoing depositions becomes a game of Russian roulette.  Trial judges may not look kindly upon “scope of the report” objections, made at trial, when the objecting counsel had the opportunity to conduct an examination, and the report language is sufficiently broad to intimate the witness’s opinion at trial. Judges seem to have great hindsight vision, and they may well distrust counsel’s objections as a different sort of sandbagging. An entire strategy of restraint may be sunk by a quick, discretionary ruling on “scope of the report,” which often will favor the proponent of the witness.

Joseph is correct that many depositions fail to accomplish much, but such failures are not the result of how wonderful the revised FRCP are.  Failed depositions are more likely to result from the lack of preparation, creativity and knowledge of counsel in carrying out coherent, effective depositions.

[1] See Primus v. United States, 389 F.3d 231, 234 (1st Cir. 2004); Vaughn v. City of Lebanon, 18 F.App’x 252, 263 (6th Cir. 2001); Musser v. Gentiva Health Services, 356 F.3d 751, 758 (7th Cir. 2004). See also Design Strategy, Inc. v. Davis, 469 F.3d 284, 296 (2d Cir. 2006) (characterizing exclusion as discretionary, but upholding district court’s exclusion).

[2] Such as may be seen with expert witnesses who belong to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a branch of the Communist Party USA, formed in 1992, after the demise of the Soviet Union.

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