CHICAGO - About 5,600 plaintiffs who claim weed killer Pparaquat caused Parkinson’s disease joined with defendants Syngenta and Chevron in a motion to stay proceedings at U.S. Seventh Circuit for 60 days to settle almost all claims.
The parties jointly moved on April 14 to hold in abeyance an appeal the judges heard at oral argument in February.
The parties stated they signed a letter agreement on April 14 that could obviate the need for the court to resolve the appeal.
They stated Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of East St. Louis, who set a first trial to start in October, didn’t object to a stay.
The appeal followed Rosenstengel’s exclusion of causation expert Martin Wells as a witness for plaintiffs last April.
No study has established a relationship between Paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease but Wells combined data from seven studies in a “meta analysis” and reported a relationship.
Rosenstengel found he isolated himself from his scientific community.
“The Seventh Circuit and courts around the country view such scientific isolation as an evidentiary red flag," she wrote.
She also found he failed to explain how he selected and excluded studies for his analysis.
At the Seventh Circuit’s oral argument, Circuit Judge Doris Pryor asked plaintiff counsel Andrianna Kastanek about 11 studies in an appendix to Wells’s initial report.
The docket doesn’t provide Kastanek’s answer but it shows she sent a clarification letter to the court clerk two days later.
She wrote that Wells included seven studies in his meta analysis and the other four were relevant to other analyses in his opinion.
She wrote that he excluded three of the other four because they weren’t about association and causation of occupational exposure to the onset of the disease.
She wrote that at his first deposition defendants asked Wells if the appendix contained a complete list of everything he considered and he said no.
“He was not asked whether, and he did not testify that, it was a list of studies included in his primary meta analysis," she wrote.
Defense counsel Leon DeJulius responded that a letter after argument might be appropriate when counsel wishes to take back a concession or retract a position.
He claimed the letter didn’t even hint at what concession or position it retracted.
He claimed the 11 studies that Wells winnowed to seven in his initial report disappeared in his rebuttal report and were replaced with 36 that he narrowed to eight before selecting seven.
He claimed the shifting studies along with other inconsistencies discussed in briefs and in Rosenstengel’s decision confirmed that Wells’s reports and depositions were irreconcilable.
Rosenstengel has presided since 2021 over Paraquat suits from many states by appointment of a judicial panel in Washington.
She held a hearing on a motion to exclude Wells in 2023 and he testified for hours.
She spent eight months on her decision and it filled 97 pages.
She found Wells offered an opinion that occupational exposure to Paraquat can cause Parkinson’s disease.
“Although Dr. Wells presents certain data points that support this conclusion his proffered opinion required several methodological contortions and outright violations of the scientific standards he professed to apply," she wrote.
She found counsel asked him at deposition if he could give a list of criteria that each study would have to meet to be included and he said he took a holistic view.
She found he never reduced his holistic review process to writing.
“As a result any attempt to replicate his search for relevant literature would require a degree of clairvoyance that this court does not possess," she wrote.
“The Seventh Circuit recognizes that expert opinions that cannot be objectively replicated are subject to exclusion.”
She found Wells defined “occupational exposure” three times, creating more questions than answers about types of exposures that could cause the disease.
She found he insisted he had credentials and followed a process but those assurances didn’t show he faithfully applied the necessary steps of his chosen methodology.
“If anything it shows the opposite," she wrote.
She found he was free to justify his selections based on the results they provided.
She found his definition and evaluation of participation rates in studies offered an even more blatant example of methodological shape shifting.
She closed with the question of whether Wells was alone in the scientific community.
She quoted the U.S. Supreme Court that, “Widespread acceptance can be an important factor in ruling particular evidence admissible.”
She wrote that she asked plaintiffs’ counsel whether any peer reviewed publication found a causal relationship between Paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease.
She wrote that counsel cited an article in Movement Disorders, the official journal of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
She found it was an advocacy piece, not a scientific study.