Richardson ex rel. Richardson v. Richardson-Merrell, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
857 F.2d 823 · 1988
Citation profile
66 federal appellate · 27 district · 22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 166 later decisions — most recently March 2018 · most notably Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Havner (1997), Brown v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (1994)
66 federal appellate · 27 district · 22 state decisions — followed in 14 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Erie Co v. Tompkins · First Nat. Bank of Ariz. v. Cities Service Co. · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 166 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Studies of this kind, singly or in combination, are not capable of proving causation in human beings in the face of the overwhelming body of contradictory epidemiological evidence.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Indeed, we are at tire other end of the spectrum, a great distance from die ‘frontier of current medical and epidemiological inquiry.’ And far from a paucity of scientific information on the oft-asserted claim of causal relationship of Bendectin and birth defects, the drug has been extensively studied and a wealdi of published epidemiological data has been amassed, none of which has concluded diat the drug is teratogenic. Uniquely to this case, die law now has the benefit of twenty years of scientific study, and the published results must be given dieir just due.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[o]nly by recalculating the [published epidemiological] data ... to obtain what he deems a statistically significant result. Moreover, the studies rejected by Dr. Done had been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while Dr. Done has neither published his recalculations nor offered them for peer review.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.