 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Jennings v. Baxter Healthcare Corp.11/17/2000
En Banc
Argued and submitted January 12, 1999.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. 152 Or App 421, 954 P2d 829 (1998).
VAN HOOMISSEN, J.
In this product liability action, plaintiff appeals from a defense verdict. She alleges that she was exposed to silicone from breast implants that leaked and ruptured, causing her personal injuries. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial court committed reversible error in excluding certain opinion testimony of plaintiff's expert witness. Jennings v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 152 Or App 421, 954 P2d 829 (1998). Defendants seek reversal of the Court of Appeals' decision and reinstatement of the trial court's judgment. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.
I. FACTS
In 1978, plaintiff received silicone gel breast implants following a bilateral mastectomy. Both implants partially deflated: the first in 1980 (which was replaced), the second in 1992. In 1993, plaintiff had the implants surgically removed, at which time it was discovered that one implant had ruptured. Plaintiff filed this action in 1994, alleging that silicone from the implants had migrated throughout her body and caused personal injuries. Defendants maintained that plaintiff's symptoms were caused by fibromyalgia and were not the result of the breast implants.
At trial, plaintiff called Dr. Grimm to testify about medical causation. Grimm is a board-certified neurologist with an advanced degree in neurophysiology. Defendants did not question Grimm's qualifications to determine the causes of neurological deficits in patients in general, but did challenge Grimm's opinion testimony regarding causation in this case. In response to defendants' admissibility challenge, the trial court conducted an in limine hearing as directed by State v. O'Key, 321 Or 285, 307 n 29, 899 P2d 663 (1995).
At the hearing, Grimm testified that he became interested in the neurological consequences of silicone in 1993, when he examined "two very sick women." As a result, he began to examine women who had silicone breast implants. At the time of plaintiff's trial, he had examined about 50 women, 45 of them in 1994.
Grimm testified that, among the women he had examined, he found
"a unique pattern that I had never seen in any other neurologic disease in this sample of women. Basically two features. One was that they were all relying on vision for their balance, because there was something wrong with their inner ear in the absence of the usual things of trauma, concussions, tumors, infections, genetic histories, et cetera.
"And the second thing was that while all of them had -- I can't say all, but we'll say 95 percent -- had patterns and complaints of tingling in their fingers and so forth, most of them were unaware that there was a loss of sensation, actual physical loss of sensation to touch, in their fingers and toes."
Grimm found that 43 of the 45 women he had examined in 1994 had vestibular difficulties:
"I had never seen in my career widespread neurologic disorders, or read about as a neurologist this -- what I thought was a unique pattern. When 45 women come in, they're sent to me from different places, and they have different implant stories, different health histories, different physical troubles, past histories, and so forth. And the unique thing was that there was an extraordinarily high correlation, 95 percent had the combination of unusual sensory pa
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Oregon Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|