Court Opinion

ID: 9477675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:28:31.957979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:59.374077
License: Public Domain

*363BAUER, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
Regrettably, I must dissent from the majority’s disposition of this case.
I.
This is a failure-to-warn case. In our earlier opinion remanding for a new trial seven years ago, we framed the dispositive issue as “whether White should be held liable for its failure to warn of the risk of cancer to the offspring of pregnant women who used dienestrol.” Needham v. White Laboratories, Inc., 639 F.2d 394, 402 (7th Cir.1981) (emphasis added). We based this formulation on Woodill v. Parke Davis & Co., 79 Ill.2d 26, 37 Ill.Dec. 304, 402 N.E.2d 194 (1980), in which the Illinois Supreme Court held that a drug manufacturer is strictly liable for failing to warn of an inherent product danger only if the manufacturer had knowledge, or by the application of reasonable, developed human skill and foresight, should have had knowledge of the danger. Id. at 35, 37 Ill.Dec. at 310, 402 N.E.2d at 200. Thus, under Illinois law, a drug manufacturer’s duty to warn in a “strict” products liability case is analogous to its duty in a products liability case based on negligence — it must warn if it knows or has reason to know of the product’s danger. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 388 (1965); Dougherty v. Hooker Chemical Corp., 540 F.2d 174, 177-78 (3d Cir.1976); Martinez v. Dixie Carriers, Inc., 529 F.2d 457, 464-65 (5th Cir.1976). Anne Needham pursued both liability theories against White Laboratories.
As the majority points out, it was well known by 1952 that estrogen treatments could cause cancer in women receiving the treatment, and that many substances could pass through the placental barrier. But, as the majority also admits, it was not clear whether estrogen therapy could cause cancer in the fetuses of pregnant women receiving the treatment. Thus, White Laboratories had a duty in 1952 to warn Mary Needham, Anne’s mother, of the dangers of dienestrol to her and was negligent in not doing so. On the other hand, whether White Laboratories had a duty to test for and warn Mary Needham of danger of dienestrol to Anne, with whom Mary Need-ham was pregnant when she ingested the drug, and whether it was negligent in not doing so, is much less clear. Mary Need-ham was not injured by the treatments, however, and is not a plaintiff in this action. Anne Needham was injured, and is the plaintiff here.
Which brings us to the district court’s negligence instruction, which stated:
The plaintiff, Anne Needham, claims in Count 1, the claim of negligence, that she was injured and that the defendant was negligent in one or more of the following respects:
One: That the defendant failed to reasonably test for potential harmful effects to users and their offspring;
Two: That the defendant failed to warn the medical profession, and, specifically, Dr. Abrams, about the reasonably foreseeable potential development of cancer to users and their offspring exposed to the effects of its drug, dienestrol.
The plaintiff further claims that one or both of the foregoing was a proximate cause of her injury.
(Emphasis added.) The Court went on to instruct:
The plaintiff has the burden of proving each of the following propositions as to Count 1, the claim of negligence:
First, that the dienestrol ingested by plaintiff’s mother was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s cancer;
Second, that the defendant acted or failed to act in one of the ways claimed by the plaintiff as stated to you in these instructions and that in so acting or failing to act, the defendant was negligent; Third, that the negligence of the defendant was a proximate cause of the injury to the plaintiff.
If you find from your considerations of all of the evidence that each of these propositions has been proved, then your verdict should be for the plaintiff.
(Emphasis added.) As the italicized portions of this instruction indicate, the district court apparently did not read our earlier opinion too carefully. The problem is *364obvious. The court’s language allowing a finding of negligence if “the defendant failed to reasonably test for harmful effects to users and their offspring” or “failed to warn the medical profession ... about the reasonably foreseeable potential development of cancer to users and their offspring” authorized the jury to award Anne Needham damages on the basis of White’s negligence toward her mother. And because the jury did not return a special verdict, we will never know if it did so.
The majority tries, unconvincingly, I think, to explain this defect away. Even though the instructions left “much to be desired as a specimen of English prose designed for persons with no legal training,” the majority holds that the instructions “read as a whole put the issue correctly to the jury, if less clearly than could be desired.” First, says the majority, the court later in the instructions stated that “[i]t was the duty of the defendant, before and at the time of Mary Needham’s ingestion of dienestrol, to use ordinary care for the safety of the plaintiff.” (The only plaintiff, the majority points out, is Anne Needham.) But this hardly corrects the problem. The district court’s language still allowed the jury to conclude that White failed to use “ordinary care for the safety of the plaintiff” if it failed to warn Mary Needham of the dangers of dienestrol to her, the user, rather than to Anne, the plaintiff. Second, says the majority, the court, also later in the instruction, stated that “[i]f you [the jury] find that the defendant White Laboratories knew or should have known by way of proper testing or inquiry into the scientific literature that the drug dienestrol was capable of causing harm to Anne Needham, and that the defendant White Laboratories did not convey this information to the medical profession, those facts would constitute negligence.” But this statement still leaves the jury free to conclude that White was negligent if it failed to warn Mary Needham about dien-estrol’s danger to her as the drug’s user— it does not state that these are the only' facts upon which the jury could find White liable. Finally, because “copies of the instructions were given to the jury to take with them into the jury room” and jury members, therefore, “were not forced to rely on their memories,” the majority finds the negligence charge less problematic. This mystifies me. That the jury took the instructions with them to the jury room means only that its members did not have to remember the court’s instructions to be confused, they could read them and be confused.
That a jury instruction contains errors, of course, does not by itself dictate reversal. W.T. Rogers Co., Inc. v. Keene, 778 F.2d 334, 341-42 (7th Cir.1985). I also am aware that it can be “artificial” to assume that “isolated passages in a lengthy set of instructions are apt to spell the difference between victory and defeat.” Id. at 342. But I cannot agree with the majority that the district court’s negligence instruction, taken as a whole, did not impair substantially the jury’s ability to understand the case. As explained above, the erroneous passages never truly were corrected. Moreover, the abundance of evidence admitted during the trial of dienestrol’s harmful effect on women receiving it, and the heavy emphasis placed upon that evidence by plaintiff’s counsel, magnifies many times the errors in the instructions and, for me, tips the scale in favor of reversal. As the majority points out, the district court never made clear to the jury that evidence of dienestrol’s harmful effects on the user of the drug had limited relevance.
For these reasons, there is more than a substantial possibility that the jury understood this case to turn on whether White Laboratories knew or should have known of the harmful effects Mary Needham might have suffered from ingesting dienes-trol, and if it did know or should have known of such danger, whether it adequately warned Mary Needham. Because of this, I cannot affirm the judgment below.
II.
But I cannot stop here. In reaching its conclusion that the negligence charge, although confusing, did not warrant reversal, *365the majority casts doubt on two other aspects of White’s claim. Although the majority found it unnecessary to delve deeper into either matter because of its views on the negligence charge, my belief that the negligence instruction warrants reversal compels me to address them.
First, the majority states that White is “almost certainly mistaken” in suggesting that the jury had to find that White knew or should have known that estrogen could cause cancer in the offspring of the user. According to the majority, under McMahon v. Eli Lilly & Co., 774 F.2d 830, 835-36 (7th Cir.1985), “[i]t would have been quite enough — might indeed have been more than enough — that White Laboratories should have known that estrogen could cause some harm to the fetus, and immaterial whether the harm took the form of cancer, let alone a specific cancer such as clear-cell adenocarcinoma.” This statement is not altogether true, however; nor does it undermine White’s attack on the negligence instruction.
In McMahon, the plaintiff alleged that her prenatal exposure to DES (when her mother ingested the drug while pregnant with her) manufactured by the defendant had rendered it difficult for her to achieve full-term pregnancies and normal deliveries. The district court directed a verdict for the defendant, however, holding that she had failed to prove that the defendant “knew or should have known of a risk of pre-term labor or prematurity among children of those women who in 1955 had ingested DES during pregnancy.” Id. at 835. We reversed, holding that, under Illinois law, the plaintiff did not have to prove that the defendant manufacturer should have anticipated the precise injuries she allegedly suffered, so long as the injuries lay within the scope of the known dangerous propensities of DES. Id. (citing Ferebee v. Chevron Chemical Co., 736 F.2d 1529,1537 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1062, 105 S.Ct. 545, 83 L.Ed.2d 432 (1984)). We concluded that “[tjhere was sufficient evidence from which a jury could reasonably have found that in 1955 Lilly knew or should have known that DES might cause reproductive abnormalities, such as prematurity, in the female offspring of women exposed to DES.” Id. at 836.
The majority is thus correct in pointing out that, to impose liability under Illinois law, the jury did not have to find that White knew or should have known that dienestrol could cause clear-cell adenocarci-noma, or perhaps even some form of cancer, in the female offspring of women exposed to dienestrol. But it is incorrect to state flatly that the jury could impose liability if it found that White Laboratories should have known that estrogen could cause “some harm to the fetus.” That “some harm” still would have to fall within the scope of the “known dangerous propensities of dienestrol.” McMahon, 774 F.2d at 835. In other words, the harm must be reasonably foreseeable.
In any case, even if the majority is correct in its belief that the district court framed the question of foreseeability too narrowly in its negligence charge, White’s central contention on appeal remains intact. White does not complain that the negligence charge allowed the jury to find liability on the ground that it knew or should have known of an arguably unforeseeable harm to Anne Needham. Rather, White complains that the jury was authorized by the district court to find liability based upon White’s knowledge of potential harm to Mary Needham. Thus, White’s attack on the negligence charge can hardly be an “artifact” of its “own insistence that Anne Needham prove that the danger of cancer to the fetus must be foreseeable.” (Majority’s emphasis.) For even if White conceded that the jury could award damages to Anne Needham if it found that White knew or should have known of some foreseeable harm to Anne other than cancer, and that it failed to warn of such harm, White’s argument would remain: there still is a substantial possibility that the jury awarded Anne Needham damages on the basis of the company’s negligence toward her mother.
The majority next hints that the injury to Anne Needham may not have to be foreseeable at all to impose liability on White. According to the majority, White’s “attack *366on the instructions assumes what is by no means certain ... that if the harm to Anne Needham was unforeseeable she cannot recover damages merely because the defendant was negligent toward her mother and the negligence caused the daughter’s injury.” “While unforeseeable plaintiffs are sometimes barred,” the majority continues (perhaps understating things), the present case is a strong one for the “ ‘limited area of transferred negligence’ ” recognized by the Illinois Supreme Court in Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital, 67 Ill.2d 348, 10 Ill.Dec. 484, 367 N.E.2d 1250 (1977). This is quite a statement, and if it is correct, White’s attack on the district court’s negligence charge is indeed wiped out.
In Renslow, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants, a doctor and a hospital, had negligently transfused her mother, who at the time was 13 years old, with 500 cubic centimeters of RH-positive blood, which sensitized her mother’s incompatible RH-negative blood. Years later, the sensitization of her mother’s blood allegedly caused prenatal damage to plaintiff’s hemolitic processes, which put plaintiff’s life in jeopardy and necessitated her induced premature birth. Plaintiff was bom jaundiced and suffering from hyperbilirubinemia, required two complete blood transfusions shortly after her birth, and alleged that, as a result of the defendants’ negligent acts, she suffered permanent damage to various organs, her brain, and her nervous system. The issue in Renslow: whether the plaintiff, “not yet conceived at the time negligent acts were committed against [her] mother, [has] a cause of action against the tortfeasors for [her] injuries resulting from their conduct[.]” See id., 10 Ill.Dec. at 485, 367 N.E.2d at 1251. The trial court held that she did not and dismissed her cause of action. Id. On appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed.
In reaching its decision, the Illinois Supreme Court first rejected “the rale permitting a cause of action only where the plaintiff was viable at the time of the injury.” Id. 10 Ill.Dec. at 486-87, 367 N.E.2d at 1252-53. Next, the court considered, and rejected, the defendants’ assertion that they nevertheless owed no duty to plaintiff because her injuries were not reasonably foreseeable at the time of their negligent act. Id. 10 Ill.Dec. at 487, 367 N.E.2d at 1253. According to the court,
[i]t [had] long been known that sensitization occurs in 90% of Rh-negative women who have received multiple transfusions of Rh-positive blood, and that about 85% of white Americans and a higher percentage of American Negroes and Chinese are Rh-positive. It [had] been likewise long known that the Rh-positive fetus of an Rh-negative woman previously sensitized is “at high risk.” Thus it [had] been pointed out that “it must be an absolute rule that Rh-positive blood is never transfused to an Rh-negative female who is below the age of menopause. For these reasons, routine Rh typing [had] been established since at least 1961.
Id. (citations omitted). Based upon this information, the court “could not conclude that the harm caused plaintiff was not reasonably foreseeable.” Id.
But even this did not solve completely the question whether the plaintiff had a cause of action. Foreseeability and duty, said the supreme court, are not identical in scope. Id. Although the court had held previously that no legal duty arises unless harm is reasonably foreseeable, id. (referring to Cunis v. Brennan, 56 Ill.2d 372, 56 Ill.Dec. 372, 308 N.E.2d 617 (1974)) (emphasis added), in some instances, no duty arises even though harm is foreseeable, id., 10 Ill.Dec. at 487-88, 367 N.E.2d at 1253-54, because “policy lines, to some extent arbitrary, must be drawn to narrow an area of actionable causation.” Id. 10 Ill.Dec at 488, 367 N.E.2d at 1254. The court pointed out, for instance, that negligence historically could not be founded upon the breach of duty owed to some person other than the plaintiff, id. 10 Ill.Dec. at 488, 367 N.E.2d at 1254 (citing Prosser, Torts, § 53 at 325 (4th ed. 1971)), and that a duty could be owed only to one with a legally identifiable existence, id. (citing Pollock, Torts, at 361 (14th ed. 1939) (“[N]egligence in the air, so to speak, will not do.”)). But, as the court also pointed out, “duty is not a static concept,” id.; it can change just as policy can change. For *367example, the court noted that it had “long recognized that a duty may exist to one foreseeably harmed even though he be unknown and remote in time and place,” id., 10 Ill.Dec. at 489, 367 N.E.2d at 1255 (emphasis added), and that “derivative actions, such as those of a husband or parent for the loss of a wife’s or child’s services, demonstrate that the law has long recognized that a wrong done to one person may invade the protected rights of one who is intimately related to the first.” Id. The plaintiff in Renslow, as the court put it, was asking the court to reexamine its notions of duty yet again and to find, in essence, “a contingent prospective duty to a child not yet conceived but foreseeably harmed by a breach of duty to the child’s mother.” Id. (emphasis added). And the court did exactly that. After concluding that “cases allowing relief to an infant for injuries incurred in its previable state make it clear that a defendant may be held liable to a person whose existence was not apparent at the time of his act,” id., 10 Ill.Dec. at 489, 367 N.E.2d at 1255, the court found it “illogical to bar relief for an act done prior to conception where the defendant would be liable for this same conduct had the child, unbeknownst to him, been conceived prior to his act.” Id.
According to the majority, Anne Need-ham’s claim is an even stronger case for “transferred negligence” than the Renslow plaintiff’s claim, presumably because Anne Needham was conceived at the time White Laboratories was negligent toward her mother. But the whole point of Renslow is that, if the harm to the plaintiff was reasonably foreseeable, it should not matter whether the plaintiff was conceived when the defendant’s negligent act occurred. The key to the court's holding in Renslow was not the “intimate relationship” between the plaintiff therein and her mother, it was the court’s finding that the harm suffered by the plaintiff was reasonably foreseeable. Indeed, at every step of its analysis, the court noted the foreseeability of the plaintiff’s harm. In short, the court in Renslow did not “transfer” any negligence on the part of the defendant toward the plaintiff’s mother from the mother to the plaintiff. To the contrary, the court in Renslow held that a duty ran to the plaintiff herself.1
Renslow, therefore, is not a “transferred negligence” case. Although the court noted that “the law recognizes a limited area of transferred negligence” in “derivative actions such as those of a husband or parent for the loss of the wife’s or child’s services,” the court did not ground its holding on the “transferred negligence” theory. It merely touched upon transferred negligence during its discussion of “duty” as a reflection of policy considerations, which in Illinois place great weight upon reasonable foreseeability. Moreover, because the type of derivative actions to which the court was referring in Renslow involve situations where the injury suffered by the “derivative” plaintiff is reasonably foreseeable, “transferred negligence,” at least as recognized by Illinois courts, seems to incorporate a reasonable foreseeability requirement. Finally, Anne Needham’s claim is *368not even analogous to a derivative action by a spouse or parent for the loss of the other spouse’s consortium or a child’s services or, for that matter, by a child for the loss of a parent’s services. In such cases, the injury to the derivative plaintiff follows from an injury to the direct (more direct than the derivative plaintiff, at least) victim of the defendant’s negligence. But Anne Needham does not claim an injury that derives from an injury to her mother. As noted earlier, her mother was not injured. Renslow, then, hardly wipes out White’s attack on the district court’s negligence charge. In my view, it bolsters White’s contention that the jury still had to find that the harm to Anne Needham was reasonably foreseeable before it could impose liability for negligence.
For these reasons, I dissent. The case should be reversed and remanded for a new trial. As it stands now, after almost a decade of litigation, the parties fulfilled their part of the bargain, but the federal courts never quite got it right.

. Admittedly, the Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion in Kirk v. Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, 117 Ill.2d 507, 111 Ill.Dec. 944, 513 N.E.2d 387 (1987), does seem to read Renslow differently. In Kirk, the court stated that "[t]he duty in Renslow was based primarily on the injury’s being a direct result of alleged negligence to the infant’s mother, which was found to have invaded the protected rights of the child, who was intimately related to the mother.” Id., 111 Ill.Dec. at 954, 513 N.E.2d at 397. The court in Kirk, however, did not use the "transferred negligence” doctrine, because no intimate relationship existed between the patient, who received negligent care from the defendant hospital, and the plaintiff, who was later injured while a passenger in plaintiff’s car. Id.
As my discussion above indicates, I disagree with the Kirk court’s construction of Renslow. Indeed, the court in Kirk used the absence of the intimate relationship between the patient and his car passenger to bar recovery for an injury that was foreseeable suffered by a plaintiff who was foreseeable. This seems to me an anomalous result. In any case, Kirk, at best, stands for the proposition that if no intimate relationship exists, there can be no transferred negligence. It does not support the proposition for which the majority would have to use it— that the presence of an intimate relationship between Anne and Mary Needham justifies "transferred negligence,” even where Anne’s injury was not foreseeable. Kirk says nothing about foreseeability; Renslow does.