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Philosophy Professor DeCew seeks solutions to resolve the conflict between the need for personal privacy and the increasing use of computers to store medical information. In her philosophy of law course, students like Abigail Rollings choose a legal case to research, analyze and present to the class. Other students are representing Clark at a local philosophy conference. |
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Interview with Abigail Rollings
Junior Abigail Rollings '04 has just completed the requirements for her philosophy major, and will spend her senior year completing the requirements for a second major in biology and a minor in chemistry. She plans to go to law school to prepare for a career in bioethics and intellectual property. In a recent interview, she discussed her research into a 1980 California Supreme Court case involving injuries from a cancer-causing drug.
How did you come to do an Academic Spree Day project? Was it through a class?
Yes, I took Philosophy of Law (Phil 270) with Professor Judi DeCew. As part of this course, everyone picks a legal case to research and present to the class. I have a couple friends who've done internships or worked at Abbott Labs, a local biotech company. One of the cases on the syllabus involved Abbott Labs as defendants, so I decided on that one.
What is the name of the case, and what was it about?
The case is Sindell vs. Abbott Labs. It was a class action suit on behalf of about 100 women, one of whom was Judith Sindell. She sued Abbott Labs and several other pharmaceutical companies for injuries she'd received from the latent effects of a drug--DES*--that her mother had taken to prevent a miscarriage when pregnant with Judith. DES had been approved in 1947 by the FDA for prevention of miscarriage experimentally only, and required that the drug have a label to that effect. DES may cause a form of cancer called adenocarcinoma in the daughters of women who took the drug. The companies manufacturing DES never notified the women that the drug was only approved experimentally.
How did the case process go? Where did Judith Sindell begin?
She started by bringing a tort case in a California civil court. That court found that she could not go forward with her case because she failed to prove causation. That is, she couldn't identify the specific company that manufactured the DES that caused her harm. Sindell appealed that decision to the appellate court in California, which agreed with the lower court ruling. Finally she appealed again to the Supreme Court of California, which overturned the earlier decisions and ruled, in Sindell v. Abbott Labs, that she should be allowed to go forward with her suit.
So the problem was that DES was produced by more than one company?
Yes, at various times it was marketed under different names by over 200 different companies. The drug companies, according to their own research that was shared industry-wide, knew that DES was a carcinogen.
So for your paper, you read the arguments on each side, and then argued your own opinion?
Yes. I read the case with an open mind and looked at the facts. In the end, I agreed with the reasoning of the California Supreme Court that Sidell should be able to go forward with her case, despite her inability to identify the specific manufacturer of the DES her mother had taken.
Why did the California Supreme Court overturn the earlier rulings?
In arriving at its decision, the California Supreme Court reinterpreted and extended the ruling of a 1948 California case, Summers v. Tice. In this case, two hunters fired shotguns in the same direction, and accidentally hit a person in the eye. It was not possible for the victim to determine which hunter had fired the shot; nonetheless, the court had decided the victim's suit could go to trial. It ruled that, since there was no way the victim could be expected to identify who had fired the shot, it was reasonable to shift the burden of proof to the defendants-the two hunters--to prove that one or the other of them didn't do it.
The California Supreme Court recognized that, although there had been about 200 DES manufacturers, only about five or six of them were responsible for making about 90% of the DES that had been sold. So if Sidell limited her suit to just those few companies, there was a very good chance that one of them would have manufactured the DES that her mom had taken. The Court suggested that if those manufacturers were found liable in a jury trial, that they should be assessed damages in proportion to their share of the market--a concept called "market-share liability."
So Sindell v. Abbott Labs was a precedent setting case. It chose to stretch the ruling in Summers v. Tice and to interpret it in a new way for slightly different circumstances.
Can you comment on the advantages and disadvantages of doing research?
I don't think there were any disadvantages! It was really fun to be able to take the time to go in depth on a case, and really read it and work up a presentation on it. And to work with Professor DeCew. She was really helpful in helping me go through everything, and telling us how to put everything together. It was just fun! This is what I want to do with my life so of course I'm interested in it. It might have been different if I wasn't. It was just fun.
* DES stands for diethylstilbesterol. It is a synthetic estrogen.
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Additional Resources
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Abigail Rollings
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The advantages and disadvantages of doing research
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