Posted on December 3, 2013 by Patrick Dennis
On November 21, 2013 the Delaware Supreme Court issued a final ruling on an appeal closing out a long saga of litigation over the scientific evidence proffered in support claims of birth defects among children born to workers in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. In Tumlinson v. Advanced Micro Devices, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s decision to exclude the plaintiffs’ key medical causation expert on Daubert grounds and thus dismissed one of the lead cases advancing the theory that working in so-called “clean rooms,” used for semiconductor wafer manufacturing, is unhealthy and can lead to birth defects in the offspring of such workers.
Wendolyn Tumlinson, one of the two adult plaintiffs, had worked at an AMD manufacturing site in San Antonio, Texas and her son was born with several birth defects, including anal atresia and stenosis, neurogenic bladder, renal agenesis/hypoplasia, imperforate anus and colo-vesicular fistula. The other adult plaintiff was married to Anthony Ontiveros who had worked at an AMD semiconductor manufacturing site in Austin, Texas and her daughter was born with several birth defects, including pulmonic stenosis, congenital pulmonary valve atresia, ventricular septal defect, right pulmonary hypoplasia, lower limb reduction defects, and situs inversus with dextrocardia. Each mother claimed that the exposures to chemicals in clean rooms were the cause of their child’s birth defects.
Plaintiffs filed their complaint on July 11, 2008 and for the next two years the parties engaged in discovery and motion practice. In December 2010, AMD moved to exclude the expert opinion of the plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Linda Frazier, claiming it was unreliable and not relevant under Delaware Rule of Evidence 702. In April 2011, the trial court held a four-day Daubert-type evidentiary hearing to evaluate the admissibility of Dr. Frazier’s testimony and concluded that because her methodology was inadequate to establish causation under Texas substantive law (including the Texas’ courts’ interpretation of Daubert), it accordingly failed to satisfy Delaware procedural law and was excluded. As a result of the exclusion, judgment was entered for defendant AMD.
On appeal, the Delaware Supreme Court (there is no intermediate appellate court in Delaware), first remanded the case to the trial court with direction to determine the reliability of Dr. Frazier’s opinion under Delaware (as opposed to Texas) law. This time the trial court evaluated the reliability of Dr. Frazier’s testimony under the US Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals case principles as interpreted under Delaware law, and found Dr. Frazier’s opinion failed to meet that standard.
The Delaware Supreme Court then evaluated the trial court’s second decision and affirmed its conclusion. It focused on, among other things, Dr. Frazier’s failure to base her opinion on studies that were specific to (1) the clean room chemicals the parents were exposed to, and (2) the specific birth defect outcomes the plaintiff children suffered from. It also found that neither Dr. Frazier’s methodology for evaluating the medical literature, nor her conclusions, were peer reviewed or had appeared in any peer reviewed journals. It rejected an argument by plaintiffs that an affidavit submitted by other experts retained by the plaintiffs that “endorsed” Dr. Frazier’s opinion sufficed as a peer review. Further, the Court was critical of the expert’s opinion because it was not consistent with her research and writing outside of the pure litigation context.
As a result of this decision, the Tumlinson case is likely over (the deadline for the plaintiffs to seek en banc review by the Delaware Supreme Court is December 2, 2013). The decision may have a significant impact on the multiple other, nearly identical cases pending in Delaware against most of the major semiconductor manufacturers, as well as similar cases pending in many other state court jurisdictions.
Tags: clean rooms, semiconductors, birth defects
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