In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 17-1990

CHERYL DALTON,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

TEVA NORTH AMERICA, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Evansville Division.

No. 3:15-cv-00162 — Richard L. Young, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED FEBRUARY 13, 2018 — DECIDED JUNE 4, 2018

____________________

Before SYKES and BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and GRIESBACH,

Chief District Judge. *

BARRETT, Circuit Judge. Cheryl Dalton appeals the summary judgment entered against her in this products liability 

case. The district court held that Dalton’s claims failed under 

Indiana law because she did not provide expert evidence on

 * Of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, sitting by designation.
2 No. 17-1990

the issue of causation. Dalton contends that she did not have 

to provide expert evidence because the cause of her injuries 

would be readily apparent to a lay juror. Because the district 

court correctly applied Indiana law, we affirm.

I.

In 2007, Dalton’s doctor implanted a ParaGard Intrauterine Device (“IUD”) in her uterus. An IUD is a form of longterm birth control, and the one Dalton used is manufactured, 

marketed, and distributed by a group of corporate affiliates 

whom we will collectively call “Teva.” It is not clear what 

role each of those corporate affiliates plays in relation to this

IUD, but this appeal does not require us to sort that out.

Dalton became dissatisfied with the IUD in 2013 and 

asked her doctor to remove it. The doctor did so by grasping 

the IUD’s strings with a ring forcep and pulling the IUD

down. The procedure, however, removed only part of the 

IUD. A piece had broken off either before or during the removal, and that piece was now lodged in her uterus. Dalton’s doctor advised her that removing the remaining portion of the IUD would require a hysterectomy.

Dalton sued Teva in federal court. She asserted three

products liability claims, which she styled as “strict liability,”

“strict products liability failure to warn,” and “manufacturer’s defect.” Under the case-management plan submitted by 

the parties and adopted by the district court, Dalton had until November 18th to disclose any expert witness and serve 

the expert witness report required by Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 26(a)(2). When Dalton made no expert disclosures, Teva moved for summary judgment. It argued that 

Indiana law requires expert testimony to show causation in 
No. 17-1990 3

products liability actions, and Dalton’s failure to procure any 

meant that she could not prove an essential element of her 

claims. Dalton responded that the causation issue was so 

straightforward that expert testimony was unnecessary. The 

district court granted summary judgment to Teva.

II.

It has been a struggle to get the information we need to 

determine whether subject matter jurisdiction exists in this 

case. Because the claims in this suit arise under state law, 

Dalton relied on the diversity jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1332, to bring her case in federal court. That statute requires complete diversity among the parties, and proving 

the citizenship of each party is Dalton’s burden.1 Craig v. Ontario Corp., 543 F.3d 872, 876 (7th Cir. 2008). There is no problem with the five defendants whom Dalton sued under the 

name “John Doe.” Those defendants were nominal parties 

who served as placeholders in the event that Dalton found

additional people to sue, and we have held that the citizenship of such defendants can be disregarded for diversity jurisdiction. Moore v. Gen. Motors Pension Plans, 91 F.3d 848, 850 

(7th Cir. 1996). But Dalton must establish the citizenship of 

the eight other defendants who are purportedly within the 

Teva corporate family—Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., Teva 

Neuroscience Inc., Teva Women’s Health LLC, and so on.

Dalton’s complaint did not allege the citizenship of these 

defendants. It asserted that the defendants as a group “are 

incorporated and have their headquarters in the state of 

Pennsylvania or another state different from the Plaintiff.” 

 1 Dalton’s complaint satisfied the amount-in-controversy requirement because it sought more than $75,000 in damages.
4 No. 17-1990

But a complaint may not merely allege diversity of citizenship without identifying the defendants’ states of citizenship, 

McCready v. eBay, Inc., 453 F.3d 882, 890–91 (7th Cir. 2006), 

and it is difficult to perceive any material difference between 

that practice and the bare assertion that the defendants are 

citizens of “another state different from the Plaintiff.” And

even if we assume that all eight named defendants are corporations, what matters for the citizenship of a corporation 

is its state of incorporation and its principal place of business, not its “headquarters.” Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 

77, 93 (2010). Unfortunately, the citizenship of the Teva defendants was never clarified in the district court.

Dalton’s opening brief on appeal was similarly deficient. 

In any case premised upon diversity jurisdiction, Circuit 

Rule 28(a)(1) requires the appellant to include a jurisdictional statement identifying “the jurisdictional amount and the 

citizenship of each party to the litigation.” Even though we 

have clearly stated that “an appellant’s naked declaration 

that there is diversity of citizenship is never sufficient,” 

Thomas v. Guardsmark, LLC, 487 F.3d 531, 533 (7th Cir. 2007),

Dalton stated only that the case “involves a diversity of citizenship.” After we ordered her to file a new jurisdictional 

statement, she asserted her own citizenship (Indiana), the 

citizenship of three corporate defendants (Pennsylvania), 

and the fact that two other corporate defendants were just 

prior names of those three Pennsylvania citizens. Teva’s brief

clarified that the three Pennsylvania citizens identified by 

Dalton are actually citizens of both Pennsylvania and Delaware. But rather than stating the citizenship of the remaining 

three defendants, Teva merely asserted that they were never 

served and did not appear in the district court. That may be, 

but because those parties were not dismissed from the case, 
No. 17-1990 5

we must still account for their citizenship. By failing to address it, Teva violated Circuit Rule 28, which obligates an 

appellee to provide a complete and correct jurisdictional 

statement when the appellant’s statement falls short.

We raised these problems at oral argument, and in postargument supplemental briefing, the parties finally accounted for the three remaining defendants. We now know that 

one unserved defendant is just the past name of another unserved defendant, who is a citizen of Delaware and Kansas, 

and that the final unserved defendant does not exist and has 

never existed. Having confirmed that no defendant is a citizen of Indiana, we are finally able to conclude that subjectmatter jurisdiction exists. It should not have taken us two 

rounds of jurisdictional statements, oral argument, and supplemental briefing to extract this basic information from the 

parties.

III.

Dalton’s claims arise under the Indiana Products Liability 

Act, which governs all consumer actions against a manufacturer for physical harm caused by a product, “regardless of 

the substantive legal theory or theories upon which the action is brought.” Ford Motor Co. v. Rushford, 868 N.E.2d 806, 

809 (Ind. 2007) (quoting IND. CODE § 34-20-1-1); see also Piltch 

v. Ford Motor Co., 778 F.3d 628, 632 (7th Cir. 2015) (applying 

the Indiana Products Liability Act to claims alleging “a design defect, a manufacturing defect, or a failure to warn”). 

Under any of those theories, she must prove that her injury 

was proximately caused by whatever defect or breach of duty underlies her claim. Id.; see also Rushford, 868 N.E.2d at

810. Dalton lost below because, believing it was unnecessary, 

she chose not to rely on expert testimony to prove the causa-
6 No. 17-1990

tion element in this case. Whether she is right about that depends on what the Indiana Products Liability Act requires.

The Act insists upon expert testimony when an issue “is 

not within the understanding of a lay person.” Piltch, 778 

F.3d at 632. Causation is often such an issue. See, e.g., id. at 

634; U-Haul Int’l, Inc. v. Nulls Mach. & Mfg. Shop, 736 N.E.2d 

271, 285 n.3 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000); Daub v. Daub, 629 N.E.2d 

873, 877–78 (Ind. Ct. App. 1994). If the circumstantial evidence in a case would require a lay juror to engage in “pure 

speculation” to find causation, then expert evidence is necessary under Indiana law. Piltch, 778 F.3d at 634.

Dalton contends that “proximate cause is obvious” in this 

case because it involves “uncomplicated facts that lead to 

only on[e] conclusion.” In Dalton’s view, a juror could look 

at a broken IUD and plainly see that some error of Teva’s 

caused the break. But as the district court held, that is exactly 

the sort of speculation that is insufficient to sustain a products liability action under the Indiana law. Dalton provides 

no explanation for how a lay juror faced with a broken IUD 

could identify the cause of the break—maybe the IUD was 

damaged after coming into the possession of the physician, 

maybe human error resulted in damage or some other problem during implantation or removal, or maybe there’s another explanation entirely. 

This case is far removed from situations in which a causation issue is so obvious that a plaintiff may forgo expert 

testimony. See, e.g., Higgins v. Koch Dev. Corp., 794 F.3d 697, 

702 (7th Cir. 2015) (“[W]hen a plaintiff suffers from a broken 

leg or a gash when hit by a vehicle, he doesn’t need to produce expert testimony.” (quoting Myers v. Ill. Cent. R.R. Co., 

629 F.3d 639, 643 (7th Cir. 2010)). It is far more like Piltch, a 
No. 17-1990 7

products liability case in which we held that a similarly 

sparse set of facts was insufficient to override the need for 

expert evidence to show defect and causation. There, the 

plaintiffs suffered serious injuries when their SUV crashed.

Piltch, 778 F.3d at 631. They contended that a manufacturing 

or design defect had prevented their airbags from deploying, 

which increased the severity of their injuries. Id. But the 

plaintiffs designated no expert witness; instead, they chose 

to rely on their experience in the accident and the owner 

manual’s statement that the airbags were supposed to deploy in a crash. Id. We held that the plaintiffs could not show 

the existence of a design defect without having an expert 

witness testify about potential alternative designs, and they 

could not show the existence of a manufacturing defect 

without expert testimony (or some other, more persuasive 

circumstantial evidence) showing that the airbags as designed should have deployed in the crash. Id. at 632–33. 

Just as in Piltch, a judgment for the plaintiff in this case 

would require the jurors to speculate about the existence of a 

defect, the reason for the proven defect, and that the proven 

defect caused the break. Contrary to Dalton’s contention, the 

issue of causation in her case is not obvious. The district 

court was therefore correct to hold that Dalton could not 

prove her tort claims without expert testimony. 

IV.

Dalton’s remaining argument is difficult to parse. She 

appears to contend that even if expert testimony is necessary 

on her manufacturing-defect claim, it is unnecessary on her 

claims that are denominated as “strict liability” and “failure 

to warn.” Her argument on this point is only one sentence, 
8 No. 17-1990

and inadequately briefed arguments are forfeited. See Puffer 

v. Allstate Ins. Co., 675 F.3d 709, 718 (7th Cir. 2012).

Dalton shifts gears in her reply brief. This argument is also unclear, but she seems to fault the district court’s opinion 

for failing to address why it was entering summary judgment on her failure-to-warn and strict-liability claims. She 

has misunderstood the district court’s opinion. The court 

discussed Dalton’s wholesale failure to provide evidence of 

causation, and all of her claims require proof of causation. 

Kovach v. Caligor Midwest, 913 N.E.2d 193, 199 (Ind. 2009) 

(holding that a plaintiff in a failure-to-warn case must establish causation); Rushford, 868 N.E.2d at 810 (“[W]ith respect 

to strict liability actions, the plaintiff must prove that ... the 

defective condition was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s 

injuries.”). Even if we were to consider an argument raised 

for the first time in a reply brief, there would be no cause for 

second-guessing here.

The district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED.