Mississippi Supreme Court Affirms Hagwood & England's Appeal
April 02, 2011.The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's ruling that plaintiff's experts' opinions concerning the pre-death level of Demerol in the decent's system should be stricken.
L. Carl Hagwood and Mary Frances S. England showed on appeal that the trial court's opinion properly relied on the recent Hill v. Mills decision and that the plaintiff's experts had no peer-reviewed data to rely on.
The plaintiffs experts had given opinions concerning the amount of Demerol in the decedent's blood stream that allegedly led to the baby's death could be determined by back-extrapolation from the level of Demerol from a post-mortem blood sample. A Daubert hearing was conducted, and the trial court excluded the plaintiff's experts' opinions because the Defendants experts presented peer-reviewed literature demonstrating that the half-life calculation used by the plaintiff's experts were unreliable. Dr. Bob Tibbs' experts contradicted the plaintiff's experts' testimony with published, peer-reviewed data, and plaintiff failed to respond with evidence showing acceptance and support in the scientific community of plaintiff's experts' theories.