Brock v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
884 F.2d 166 · 1989
Citation profile
25 federal appellate · 6 district · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993), Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Havner (1997)
25 federal appellate · 6 district · 14 state decisions
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
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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“did not wish [its decision] to stand as a bar to future Bendectin cases in the event that new and statistically significant studies emerge that would give the jury a firmer basis upon which to determine the issue of causation.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“statistically significant epidemiological proof that Bendectin causes limb reduction defects.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“have the effect of encouraging district judges faced with medical and epidemiological proof in subsequent toxic tort cases to be especially vigilant in scrutinizing the basis, reasoning, and conclusiveness of studies presented by both sides.”
3 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.