Judge excludes testimony of expert witness in contact-lens solution lawsuits

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US District Judge David C. Norton has thrown out testimony from an expert witness in a combined series of lawsuits against Bausch amp; Lomb, Inc. over ReNu with Moisture Loc, a contact-lens solution the company recalled three years ago because its use was linked to fusarium keratitis, a fungal eye infection that can lead to blindness.

In his Aug. 28 ruling, Norton refused the plaintiffs' bid to admit into evidence testimony by Elisabeth J. Cohen, MD, of the Jefferson Medical College and the Wills Eye Hospital. Norton said that Dr. Cohen's theory, in the way she presented it before the court, "is built on an unsupported hypothesis, and is thus fundamentally flawed and must be excluded."

The AP reports that Norton "said there's no reliable scientific basis for arguing that MoistureLoc caused another 1,024 lens wearers across the" US "to contract assorted bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections." The judge ruled that "attorneys relying on the expert opinion of" Dr. Cohen "did not submit any peer-reviewed studies, articles, or case reports concluding that there is a causal relationship between MoistureLoc and non-Fusarium infections."

Posted in: Bausch Lomb, Contact lens, Fusarium, Keratitis, Law, MoistureLoc, ReNu