Bayer Wins Daubert Ruling Excluding All Plaintiffs’ Expert Witnesses in the Mirena IIH MDL

On October 24, 2018, New York federal judge Paul Engelmayer in a 156-page ruling excluded testimony from all plaintiffs’ expert witnesses in Bayer’s Mirena Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) MDL finding that the experts’ testimony was based on “unreliable methodologies”. As Judge Engelmayer noted about plaintiffs’ made-for-litigation causation theory, “outside of this litigation, there is a complete absence of scholarship opining that Mirena, or for that matter any LNG-based contraceptive, is a cause of IIH.”  Without adequate scientific support for their causation opinions, the Court concluded that “each of the experts fell short of the Daubert test and required being precluded from testifying.” This was a significant victory in the IIH MDL for Goldman Ismail clients Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Bayer Pharma AG, and Bayer Oy. Shayna Cook serves as co-lead national defense counsel in the Mirena IIH MDL. Brian O’Donoghue is national coordination counsel. Kenneth Baum, J.D., M.D. leads the national science and expert team. Other team members include Tarek Ismail, Emma Ross, Allyson Julien, Laura Sexton, and Michael Casner.  Co-counsel are from Covington & Burling LLP and Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP. Press coverage of the Daubert ruling is available here and here.