3rd Cir. Upholds Summary Judgment Award to Pfizer in Zoloft Birth Defect MDL

PHILADELPHIA — A federal appeals court has upheld an award of summary judgment to Pfizer in more than 300 Zoloft birth defect cases, finding the multidistrict litigation court properly excluded the opinions of plaintiffs’ general causation expert, Dr. Nicholas Jewell, Ph.D., as unreliable.

On June 2, the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that by applying different techniques to subsets of the data and inconsistently discussing statistical significance, Dr. Jewell failed to reliably analyze the weight of the evidence.

The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee sought to offer Dr. Jewell as a general causation expert. Dr. …