April Zambelli-Weiner is an epidemiologist (meaning she's not an M.D.), on the plaintiffs' side, who claims expertise in a wide variety of areas. In addition to the Zofran (birth defect) litigation that prompted this (and a prior) post, her name pops up in litigation over leukemia, Walsh v. BASF Corp., ___ A.3d ___, 2020 WL 4135151, at *12 (Pa. July 21, 2020) ("no ruling with respect to whether [her] failure to opine on whether . . . specific products may cause leukemia precludes her use as an expert"); inflammatory bowel disease, In re Accutane Litig., 2020 WL 260901, at *8 (N.J. Super. App. Div. Jan. 17, 2020) ("her analysis did not conform to the scientific methodology"), certif. denied, 2020 WL 2555213 (N.J. May 12, 2020); strokes, Galinis v. Bayer Corp., 2019 WL 2716480, at *10 (N.D. Cal. June 28, 2019) (testified that "studies funded by or otherwise associated with" the defendant were less "reliable than an "FDA-funded study"); and uterine perforation, In re Mirena IUD Products Liability Litigation, 169 F. Supp.3d 396, 482-88 (S.D.N.Y. 2016) (opinions "outside the scope of her expertise" and "not based on a sound methodology").
We've already described the underlying dispute about her actions in our "Stupid Expert Tricks" post, so we won't repeat that here. Suffice it to say that some of the testimony she offered caused her own lawyer to "file[] an emergency motion to withdraw his appearance, notifying the Court that he had learned that 'factual representations' made in her affidavit were 'inaccurate.'" In re Zofran (Ondansetron) Products Liability Litigation, 392 F. Supp.3d 179, 183 (D. Mass. 2019) ("Zofran I"). As we already blogged, Zofran I granted the defendant's motion to compel additional discovery into the unusual plaintiff-side funding (to the tune of over $200,000) of a study that Zambelli-Weiner conducted while a plaintiffs' "consultant" to support the plaintiffs' allegations in the Zofran MDL litigation.
In the prior post, just about every one of the "stupid expert tricks" we recounted was accompanied by prolonged attempts to thwart discovery into the conduct of the experts at issue. The Zofran MDL is no different. After being compelled to turn over documents detailing how her study was conducted in collaboration with plaintiffs' counsel from the outset, Zambelli-Weiner invalidly claimed that documents she thereby produced were "confidential" when they really weren't. Her further attempts at preventing public disclosure were rejected in In re Zofran (Ondansetron) Products Liability Litigation, 2020 WL 1550563 (D. Mass. April 1, 2020) ("Zofran II"). Perhaps the MDL judge has a sense of humor - issuing this opinion on April Fools' Day.
Four documents were "de-designated" in Zofran II. They are now public, and we have them - so anyone can read them. Here is the MDL court's brief description of the procedural background:
April Zambelli-Weiner . . . is the co-author of an epidemiological study that plaintiffs cite as evidence that Zofran causes birth defects. At the time she conducted the study, she was a paid consultant to plaintiffs' counsel. The study itself was funded by plaintiffs' counsel in the amount of $210,000. Dr. Zambelli-Weiner also participated, along with plaintiffs' counsel, on a panel at a conference in Las Vegas concerning this litigation.
2020 WL 1550563, at *1. Here are the documents, as described in Zofran II:
(1) a Zofran study protocol prepared by Dr. Zambelli-Weiner; (2) unpublished analyses that compared the birth defects risks associated with Zofran to those...
