## Facts

- Amy DeLuca was born with serious lower-extremity limb-reduction defects, including deformity and shortening of the left lower leg, absence of the fibula and toes, and a missing toe on the right foot.
- Amy’s parents alleged the defects were caused by her mother’s ingestion of Bendectin (an anti-nausea drug) during pregnancy.
- Plaintiffs’ causation proof relied primarily on Dr. Alan Done, a pediatric pharmacologist.
- Dr. Done based his opinion on epidemiological studies addressing Bendectin and birth defects, but interpreted the studies differently from other experts by emphasizing relative risk measures and confidence intervals rather than conventional statistical-significance thresholds.
- Dr. Done opined that Bendectin can cause the type of limb defects at issue and that it did so in Amy’s case to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court misapplied Federal Rule of Evidence 703 by excluding Dr. Done’s testimony because his interpretation of epidemiological studies was not “data of a type reasonably relied upon by experts” in the field.
2. Whether, after excluding that testimony, summary judgment for the manufacturer on causation was proper.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment and remanded.
- The court held the district court erred by excluding Dr. Done under Rule 703 based on disagreement with his interpretation of accepted epidemiological studies.
- Because the exclusion eliminated plaintiffs’ only causation evidence, the resulting grant of summary judgment was also erroneous.
- The court directed the district court on remand to reassess admissibility under the proper framework, including consideration of Rules 702 and 403 as appropriate.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 703 focuses on whether an expert relied on a type of data reasonably used by experts in the field, not whether the expert’s conclusions match the prevailing interpretation of that data.
- When qualified experts rely on the same recognized scientific literature but disagree about what inferences can be drawn, that disagreement generally goes to weight and credibility, not categorical exclusion under Rule 703.
- Courts should not convert majority scientific views into per se admissibility rules under Rule 703; methodological reliability and potential jury confusion are addressed, if at all, through Rules 702 and 403.

## Conclusion

The Third Circuit held that reliance on standard epidemiological studies satisfied Rule 703 even if the expert drew a contested causal inference from them, reversed the exclusion of the plaintiffs’ causation expert, and vacated summary judgment for the drug manufacturer, remanding for further admissibility analysis under the correct evidentiary standards.


DeLuca ex rel. DeLuca v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 911 F.2d 941 (3d Cir. 1990)