Executive Summary

  • In courtrooms across the nation, predatory trial lawyers use shaky science to manipulate juries into awarding millions (sometimes billions) of dollars to sympathetic plaintiffs.
  • But when juries hold companies liable for harm that the companies did not cause, they undermine the truth-seeking function of the American judicial system.
  • Verdicts that are not based on careful, fact-based determinations of causation impose unfair economic burdens on the manufacturers of safe and beneficial products.
  • Ultimately, it is the consumers that pay the price in the form of higher prices and reduced access to useful products and potentially life-saving medications and vaccines.
  • Trial judges must take seriously their role as evidentiary gatekeepers to ensure that unreliable expert testimony does not unduly prejudice outcomes.