Opinion ID: 186961
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Description

Text: 16 Keller described the pill she took as small, round, white, and cross-scored, and she picked the Lilly pill out of a photo array. Of the approximately 20 pills she was shown, however, no other pill was round, white, and cross-scored and Keller admitted that seeing the photos probably reminded her of what the pill she took looked like. In any event, as Lilly points out, her description is insufficient to allow a reasonable juror to conclude Keller purchased Lilly's brand of DES because it also describes the Marsh Parker pill. 1 17 Lilly reasons that, because the Marsh Parker pill shows Keller's description is not unique to Lilly's product, it might apply to any number of DES pills manufactured in 1964-65. Lilly's point is that Keller's description could not prove she took a Lilly pill even if Galvin could prove Keller did not purchase the Marsh Parker pill. This approach implies a burden shifting sequence for product identification through physical description: First, Galvin must provide a physical description that matches the Lilly pill. Then, to avoid judgment, Lilly must show that at least one other DES pill matches Keller's description, in which event Galvin, finally, must show not only that Keller did not take the matching pill(s) identified by Lilly but also that Keller did not take any other pill identified by Lilly as having been in the market but not otherwise described. Because we hold that Galvin has not eliminated the Marsh Parker pill from consideration, we reach no conclusion regarding Lilly's approach. 18 Keller's supplemental affidavit, assuming it was admissible, does not help Galvin eliminate the Marsh Parker pill. Although the supplemental affidavit includes a photograph of a Lilly DES pill as a purported description of the pills Keller took, it does not indicate that Keller selected the Lilly pill in a pairwise comparison against the Marsh Parker pill. The photograph is therefore only a visual representation of Keller's earlier verbal description, not her identification of the Lilly pill, and as such does not show that Keller took a pill manufactured by Lilly rather than by Marsh Parker. 19 Galvin also presented the affidavits of Harold Sparr and Philip Cafferty stating that no company other than Lilly manufactured a round, white, cross-scored DES pill. Rule 56(e) requires admissible affidavits to be made on personal knowledge, . . . set forth such facts as would be admissible in evidence, and . . . show affirmatively that the affiant is competent to testify to the matters stated therein. Sparr and Cafferty do not lay claim to the personal knowledge necessary to meet this requirement. Sparr recounts that he is a former President of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, former President of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Alumni Association, and twice a delegate to the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, which sets standards for all medicines and other healthcare products manufactured and sold in the United States, see The United States Pharmacopeial Convention, Inc., About USP, http://www.usp.org/aboutUSP. Cafferty is a pharmacist and former Eli Lilly district manager for Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Although well-credentialed experts, their self-described experiences are almost exclusively limited to New England; the only experiences remotely suggesting that either might have any knowledge of the DES market outside New England are, in Sparr's case, attendance at the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, but he does not indicate when he was a delegate nor what his role was, and in Cafferty's, his position at Lilly, though he provides no information about it to suggest as much. Nothing in their affidavits do anything to establish their competence to testify as to what brands of DES were available in Kansas in 1964-65. No reasonable juror therefore could find their assertions regarding the DES market credible with reference to any place other than New England. 20 Galvin suggests the Marsh Parker pill was unavailable in Kansas in 1964-65 because, of the three drug directories in the record, only the Red Book lists Marsh Parker as a manufacturer then. Furthermore, market share analyses done for DES litigation in New York and California do not include the Marsh Parker pill. 21 This evidence would not permit a reasonable juror to infer that Marsh Parker was not in the Kansas market during the relevant time period. The market share analysis in the California litigation concerned a different product — 5 mg pills, not the 25 mg pills at issue in this case — and it is unclear whether the market being evaluated even included Kansas. California law requires market share liability to be calculated using an analysis of the relevant DES market, Brown v. Superior Court, 44 Cal.3d 1049, 245 Cal.Rptr. 412, 751 P.2d 470, 486 (1988), and the record does not indicate whether the relevant market for that litigation is the California market, some smaller local or larger regional market, or the national market. The market share analysis used in the New York litigation was national in scope, see Hymowitz v. Eli Lilly & Co., 73 N.Y.2d 487, 541 N.Y.S.2d 941, 539 N.E.2d 1069, 1078 (1989), but a reasonable juror could not infer anything from the one page Galvin put into the record. That page covers only about 30 percent of the market during the relevant time; Lilly represents and Galvin does not deny that only 56 percent of the market was allocated to specific companies even in the complete analysis. Furthermore, the page we have appears to be an alphabetical listing of manufacturers from H to Re, but many of the listed manufacturers are said to have been granted summary judgment in the N.Y. Market Share proceeding (whatever that may be) and have no market share indicated; certain other manufacturers have no market share indicated without explanation. A reasonable juror therefore could not infer anything from Marsh Parker's absence from the list, and would have no basis for concluding Marsh Parker's national market share was not part of the unallocated 44 percent. Finally, Galvin concedes the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR), which she put into the record, is not an exhaustive list of manufacturers; 2 nor does she challenge the accuracy of the 1964 and 1965 Red Books in which Marsh Parker is listed. 22 Galvin does argue that, because the 1964 and 1965 Red Books do not distinguish between regional and national manufacturers or contain any information about availability, popularity or accessibility, no reasonable juror could infer from them that Marsh Parker then sold 25 mg DES pills in the Kansas market. Relatedly, Galvin suggests Lilly must provide evidence showing Marsh Parker was stocked at the Crowell Ash Drug Store. It is Galvin's burden, however, to show Keller more likely than not took DES manufactured by Lilly; noting that a listing in the Red Book is consistent both with Marsh Parker selling in Kansas and not selling in Kansas does not help meet that burden. 23 Even if Marsh Parker was in the relevant market, Galvin suggests the evidence of Lilly's dominant market share would allow a reasonable juror to infer that Keller probably purchased a Lilly pill. 3 The case law on this issue is mixed, compare, e.g., Smith v. Rapid Transit, 317 Mass. 469, 58 N.E.2d 754, 755 (1945), with Kramer v. Weedhopper of Utah, Inc., 141 Ill.App.3d 217, 95 Ill.Dec. 631, 490 N.E.2d 104, 107-08 (1986), though we understand courts usually reject the argument Galvin is making. See, e.g., FREDERICK SCHAUER, PROFILES, PROBABILITIES, AND STEREOTYPES 81 (2003). But see Ronald J. Allen & Brian Leiter, Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence, 87 VA. L. REV. 1491, 1524-25 (2001). See generally Jonathan J. Koehler, When Do Courts Think Base Rate Statistics Are Relevant?, 42 JURIMETRICS J. 373 (2002). Even if we were, however, to conclude that statistical evidence could by itself establish causation for the purpose of summary judgment, Galvin would still need to adduce statistics indicating it was more likely than not that Keller took pills manufactured by Lilly. 24 Galvin points to four pieces of evidence relating to Lilly's presence in the DES market. First, according to a market share analysis constructed for an unidentified lawsuit in New York, Lilly had 28.9 percent of the national market for 25 mg DES pills in 1964 and 27.5 percent in 1965. Second, as mentioned above, an analysis concerning 5 mg pills constructed for a lawsuit in California showed Lilly had a 47.8 percent share in 1964 and a 48.9 percent share in 1965 in some unspecified geographical market. Third, Galvin presented the 1960 testimony of a Lilly vice president that Lilly produced approximately 75 percent of the stilbesterol consumed in the United States. The probative value of this statement is essentially nil, however, because most stilbesterol was consumed by animals. Finally, Galvin cites the listing for diethylstilbesterol in the 1965 PDR, which identifies only Lilly as a manufacturer. Although Galvin concedes the PDR listing does not prove Lilly was the only manufacturer of DES that year, she does contend a reasonable juror could infer that Lilly was the dominant producer in the national market. 25 Based upon this evidence, a reasonable juror could not infer the probability Keller took a pill manufactured by Lilly is greater than 50 percent. Most of the evidence presented either does not directly address a relevant product or geographic market or, in the case of the PDR, is simply uninformative on the question whether Lilly accounted for more than 50 percent of the market. The most probative evidence is clearly the national market share analysis used in the New York litigation, and it suggests the probability that Keller purchased a Lilly pill is less than 30 percent — well below the more likely than not standard. On this record, a reasonable juror could not conclude Lilly was more likely than not the manufacturer of the pills Keller took. 26 Finally, Galvin argues in essence that the whole of her evidence is greater than the sum of its parts. Put another way, she argues a juror could reasonably infer the white cross-scored pill Keller took was more likely manufactured by Lilly than by Marsh Parker because Lilly's share of the market for round white cross-scored DES pills was greater than Marsh Parker's at the relevant time. This argument may be consistent with our decision in Shields, see 895 F.2d at 1466, but Galvin simply has not provided the evidence — market share data for the Marsh Parker pill in a relevant market — necessary for a reasonable juror to conclude that a Lilly pill was probably the cause of her injury. She does submit a page from a market share analysis performed for New York litigation that reports Lilly had approximately 28-29 percent of the market during the relevant time and does not include Marsh Parker at all but, for the reasons noted above, no reasonable juror could infer anything from Marsh Parker's absence from that analysis.