HOUSTON - U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison quashed subpoenas that Paraquat plaintiffs served on Texas state agencies in search of evidence for a theory their lawyers failed for three years to support.
He quashed a first stack of subpoenas in April and a second stack on July 24.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed notice of the second order with Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of East St. Louis.
She presides over about 6,000 suits against Paraquat producer Syngenta and former producer Chevron.
Plaintiffs claim the weed killer causes Parkinson’s disease but scientists have performed many studies without establishing a connection.
Plaintiffs offered an expert who plucked data from five studies to establish a connection and Rosenstengel excluded his opinion last year.
She called his findings contortions and found he violated standards he professed to apply.
She selected plaintiffs for trials that could shape global settlement but plaintiffs for the first two trials dismissed their claims last year for lack of evidence.
She expressed concern about implausible and far fetched cases and directed lawyers to clear implausible and far fetched claims from her docket.
Hundreds of plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims and others abandoned claims rather than answer mandatory questionnaires.
The pace of the cleanup didn’t satisfy Rosenstengel and in February she selected 25 plaintiffs for third party discovery.
Nine of them voluntarily dismissed their claims and her concerns grew.
Her special master Randi Ellis reviewed all questionnaires and found many plaintiffs hadn’t produced any documentary evidence of exposure.
She issued a blanket order on Feb. 26 for each plaintiff to serve subpoenas on any and all third parties for documentary evidence proving use or exposure.
She found subpoenas would provide an opportunity to better determine the strength of claims and expose claims without merit.
From March 11 to March 27, plaintiffs served 150 subpoenas on Texas agriculture department, Texas A & M University and Prairie State A & M University.
The state sued for relief on March 28 on the basis of sovereign immunity.
Assistant attorney general Sherlyn Harper claimed plaintiffs expected Texas to save their case.
“Despite the plaintiffs being in the best position to document their alleged injuries and demonstrate their qualifications as participants in the class, they have engaged the state of Texas to do the work of substantiating their claims for them,” Harper wrote.
She claimed they called for productions reaching back to 1961.
She claimed compliance would cause complete operational stoppage in rural counties.
She claimed plaintiffs didn’t limit the subpoenas to substantiating claims.
“Rather, the subpoenas relate to authorization regarding Paraquat and are a fishing expedition to add claims and liable parties,” she wrote.
She claimed the agriculture department and the universities would have to manually sort through confidential material for connections to thousands of plaintiffs.
She claimed they would have to divert technology resources away from their purposes.
She claimed they would have to locate, review and produce nearly every document in their possession concerning any and all agricultural chemicals.
She claimed they would have to reproduce information easily accessible on their websites and other public sources.
“It appears plaintiffs did not even bother to check those websites before sending their overbroad subpoenas,” she wrote.
Subpoenas continued to arrive and Harper added them to the motion on April 5.
Plaintiffs didn’t respond.
Judge Ellison quashed the subpoenas on April 22, granting sovereign immunity on the basis of failure to respond.
Subpoenas kept coming and according to Harper the state asked plaintiffs to withdraw them.
“Notwithstanding the prior quash order, none of the attorneys agreed to withdraw their subpoenas,” Harper wrote.
She moved to quash them on June 28 and Ellison set a hearing for July 29.
Plaintiffs didn’t respond so Ellison canceled the hearing and granted the motion.
He quoted a local rule that failure to respond is taken as a representation of no opposition.
Cleanup of Rosenstengel’s docket continues and she closed 90 cases from July 17 to July 31.
As of July 31 she hadn’t adopted a recommendation Ellis made in May to dismiss 137 plaintiffs who didn’t return questionnaires.
The Pulaski Kehrkehr firm in Houston represents 112 of them.
Tor Hoerman of Edwardsville represents four.