Contact Lens Solution Litigation

Bausch & Lomb has entered into settlements with over 600 claimants over its ReNu with Moistureloc contact lens solution. In those cases, the allegations were that the solution could cause fusarium keratitis, a serious fungal eye infection. We discussed this in our previous blog, Bausch & Lomb Eye Fungus Cases.
In that blog, we also discussed that the judges (New York state judge Shirley Cornreich, and South Carolina federal judge David Norton) were tag-teaming the Daubert-Frye hearings to determine if Plaintiffs’ proposed experts could properly link ReNu with non-fusarium keratitis cases. In each case, the Plaintiffs were dealt a blow when the judges ruled separately that the expert is restricted from testifying as to general causation between ReNu and non-fusarium keratitis cases. This means Plaintiffs cannot provide expert testimony that ReNu generally (we are not even talking about in a specific case) can cause these infections. According to the opinions, the Plaintiffs’ expert did not do any specific testing and was not aware of any data that would suggest a link. Defendant’s expert, a physician at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins (and also a paid consultant of Bausch & Lomb since before the litigation) had a more persuasive argument. He put together a panel of experts early on, studied reports and articles, and noted that there was no acceptance in the scientific community that ReNu causes an increase in non-fusarium keratitis cases.

So, it looks like game over for plaintiffs. They tried to keep the litigation alive, but there isn’t enough evidence for a connection.