Procter & Gamble defends multidistrict product liability litigation over allegations surrounding neurological effects of long-term dental cream use

Client(s) Procter & Gamble Company, The; Procter & Gamble Distributing, LLC, The; Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The

Jones Day is representing The Procter & Gamble Company, The Procter & Gamble Distributing, LLC, and The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company in a multidistrict litigation in which plaintiffs allege that long-term use of P&G's dental cream can cause neurological damage. The district court excluded the plaintiffs' expert witnesses in the lead Chapman case on the grounds that they offered only unreliable opinions on causation, and granted summary judgment to P&G. The plaintiffs appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed the ruling in a published opinion, and petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review.

After the Eleventh Circuit's Chapman decision, plaintiffs in nearly all of the remaining MDL cases submitted additional expert opinions on causation to the district court. The district court, however, again excluded their expert opinions as unreliable under Daubert and Federal Rule of Evidence 702, and granted judgment in favor of P&G. Plaintiffs in approximately 50 of those cases appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. In June 2015, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's Daubert ruling and entry of judgment for P&G.

In re Denture Cream Prods. Liab. Litig., 795 F. Supp.2d 1345 (S.D. Fla. 2011); Chapman v. Procter & Gamble Distributing, LLC, 766 F.3d 1296 (11th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 2312 (2015); In re Denture Cream Prods. Liab. Litig., 2015 WL 392021 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 28, 2015); Jones v. SmithKline Beecham, 2016 WL 3269459 (11th Cir. June 15, 2016)