Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Bruesewitz v. Wyeth. The case will decide:

Whether Section 22(b)(1) of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 — which expressly preempts certain design defect claims against vaccine manufacturers “if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warning” — preempts all vaccine design defect claims, regardless whether the vaccine’s side effects were unavoidable.

The relevant briefs and opinions are available at SCOTUSBlog.

There’s an old saying that lawyers and judges bat around, “reasonable minds can disagree.” (Of course, few people really believe that, but we all say we do.)

On the above question — in essence, whether Congress intended to wash away (i.e., “preempt”) whole swaths of state-law product liability claims against vaccine manufacturers or if Congress merely intended to set up streamlined compensation for a certain class of rare but unavoidable vaccine-related injuries — the Georgia Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reached expressly opposite answers less than one year apart from one another. The Georgia Supreme Court answered “no,” while the Third Circuit answered “yes.”

The Supreme Court will tell us which Court was right.

I’ll leave the merits of the arguments to others. Obviously, if a state Supreme Court and a federal Court of Appeals reached opposite conclusions, then “reasonable minds can disagree.” The Third Circuit’s opinion is here. The Georgia Supreme Court’s opinion is here. Judge for yourself.

What caught my eye was this portion of Wyeth’s brief to the Supreme Court, part of their argument for why the Supreme Court should hear the case:

Today, a new litigation threat to the nation’s vaccine supply exists. Approximately 5,000 petitions are currently pending in the “Omnibus Autism Proceeding” in Vaccine Court. HRSA, National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Statistics Report (Sep. 14, 2009, http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statistics_report.htm. While the omnibus proceeding will decide for all of the pending cases whether there is a causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, that ruling will have no preclusive effect outside of Vaccine Court. 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-23(e). Each claimant may elect to file a civil action after proceeding through Vaccine Court. Over 350 civil actions have been filed against vaccine manufacturers in various courts with allegations that childhood vaccines caused the recipient to develop autism.

The potential deluge of post-Vaccine Court litigation could lead to the same dangerous situation that existed in the mid-1980s. The number of childhood vaccine manufacturers has not increased since the enactment of the Vaccine Act. In the United States market today, as in 1986, there is still just one manufacturer for the polio vaccine, one for MMR, and two for the DTP vaccine. Compare 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 6348, with FDA/CBER, Thimerosal in Vaccines, http://www.fda.gov/CBER/vaccine/thimerosal.htm (last updated Aug. 31, 2009). Thus, what Congress said in 1986 is true today: “The loss of any of the existing manufacturers of childhood vaccines at this time could create a genuine public health hazard.” 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 6348.

Wyeth Brief, pp. 17-18.

At first blush, Wyeth’s reasoning seems sound. The question presented by Bruesewitz v. Wyeth could determine the fate of more than 5,000 pending cases. That makes Bruesewitz v. Wyeth worthy of attention.

But that doesn’t make the case necessarily worthy of the Supreme Court’s attention. Outside of constitutional rulings, the Supreme Court’s primary job is to interpret the laws passed by Congress, not to enact new laws or to fret over the consequences of old laws. To the extent upcoming autism litigation is a problem, that’s an issue for Congress — not the Court — to address.

If, indeed, “the loss of any of the existing manufacturers of childhood vaccines at this time could create a genuine public health hazard,” then Congress could step in and immediately terminate all of the pending cases by amending the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. Congress could, for example, amend to law to clearly preempt all civil suits brought for injuries arising from polio, MMR, or DTP vaccines.

Moreover, though 5,000 cases sure sounds like a lot, it’s not really that much in the big picture. The Vioxx settlement involves ten times that many. And do you know how many cases it really turned into?

One.

Thanks to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, once litigation over a particular issue becomes too big, it can be consolidated into a single proceeding before a single judge. That’s what happened to Vioxx, it’s what’s happening to Toyota, and it’s what will happen to the Autism/Vaccine litigation. At this very moment, approximately 92,000 separate lawsuits arising from a wide variety of situations (ranging from asbestos poisoning to securities fraud) have been consolidated into a mere 310 MDL actions.

A “deluge” of one, I suppose.

And what will likely happen in that single case?

Probably the same thing that happened before the Special Masters and before the Court of Federal Claims: the plaintiffs will lose. Odds are good that the plaintiffs won’t even get to a jury; all it takes is for the MDL court to find that plaintiffs’ experts’ theories do not satisfy Daubert and — poof — the cases are all over before a single witness testifies.

Consider this passage from the Cedillo opinion:

[…] Petitioners’ sequence of cause and effect depends upon a presence of persistent measles virus infection in Michelle’s body. However, the Special Master concluded that “the petitioners offered virtually no evidence concerning this necessary element in their proposed chain of proof– i.e., their claim that the measles virus, which they claim to persist in [autistic] children, is vaccine-strain measles virus.” Id. at *52. The Special Master also saw no logical sequence of cause and effect between the MMR vaccine and Michelle’s development of inflammatory bowel disease. Specifically, the Special Master found Dr. Krigsman’s theory that Michelle suffered from an MMR-induced inflammatory bowel disease to be factually incorrect because Michelle did not suffer from gastrointestinal inflammation, and Dr. Krigsman “gravely misunderstood the temporal history of Michelle’s gastrointestinal problems.” Id. at *114-15. The Special Master’s conclusion that Petitioners failed to demonstrate any relationship between the MMR vaccine and Michelle’s autism is eminently reasonable. He determined that they offered “virtually no evidence” to support their claim. See id. at *52.

That’s a big problem. Given the amount of effort put into the case, it’s hard to see the plaintiffs curing this problem down the road. Similarly, the primary study demonstrating a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism was officially retracted last month.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves with these details. The point is: if the Supreme Court agrees with the Georgia Supreme Court and finds that only claims arising from unavoidable vaccine injuries are preempted, the sky will not fall. Not even if the autism litigation goes forward.

Most likely, the sky won’t even move at all.

And if it moves too much, then Congress can put it back, just like they did in 1986.

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