Opinion ID: 175410
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Statistical Significance

Text: The district court relied on Oran v. Stafford, 226 F.3d 275 (3d Cir.2000), and In re Carter-Wallace, Inc., Sec. Litig., 220 F.3d 36 (2d Cir.2000), and found Medtronic's failure to disclose statistically insignificant information could not have been misleading in light of the information disclosed in the letter. In Oran, the data presented by the defendant was characterized as inconclusive but some adverse data was omitted. Oran, 226 F.3d at 284. The court found the data was inconclusive even taking into account the adverse data, and found the omission was not material because it would not have made the data conclusive. Id. A certain number of adverse reports are expected and acceptable in medical treatments and the Oran court reasoned a company is under no obligation to divulge adverse reports unless they constitute statistically significant evidence of a problem. Id. Medtronic disclosed the fact that there were reports of higher failure rates in its dear doctor letter. It omitted the actual reports and information. DGRS has failed to allege any facts proving the omitted information would have put investors on notice at that time that either doctor error was not a significant contributing factor in the device failures or the overall failure rate of the device was higher than that of other devices.