Craft v. Vanderbilt University

174 F.R.D. 396, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21733, 1996 WL 905349
District Court, M.D. Tennessee·Decided November 19, 1996·No. No. 3:94-0090·Published·Cited by 10 cases

Opinion

JOHN T. NIXON, Chief Judge.

MEMORANDUM

Pending before the Court are Motions to Decertify Plaintiffs’ Class filed by Defendants Vanderbilt University (Doe. No. 253), Vanderbilt Medical Center (Doc. No. 253), Rockefeller Foundation (Doc. No. 253) filed on November 7, 1994, and Monsanto Company (Doc. No. 251), filed on November 7,1994. Plaintiffs filed a Motion in Opposition to the Defendants’ Motions to Decertify the Class on November 11,1994 (Doc. No. 271).

Supplemental Memorandum were filed on this issue by Defendants Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Doc. No. 400) on June 6, 1996, and by Monsanto Company (Doc. No. 408) on July 1, 1996. Plaintiffs filed a Supplemental Reply Memorandum regarding Class Certification on June 28, 1996 (Doc. No. 402). Defendant Rockefeller Foundation joined in the Supplemental Memorandum filed by Defendant Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and filed a Reply to [400] the Plaintiffs Supplemental Reply Brief on July 1,1996 (Doc. No. 405).

For the reasons stated below, the Court denies Defendants’ Motion to Decertify Plaintiffs’ Exposed Women and Exposed Children Classes, and grants Defendants’ Motion to Decertify the Control Group Class. As the Court finds that it is more accurate to characterize medical monitoring as a remedial request for the exposed women and exposed children classes rather than a separate class, the Court grants Defendants’ Motion to Decertify the Medical Monitoring Class and will treat medical monitoring as a requested remedy. Further, the Court will allow Plaintiffs 30 days to identify a class representative who received radioactive isotopes supplied by the Monsanto corporation. If Plaintiffs are unable to identify such a class representative, Monsanto will not be retained as a defendant to class litigation.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs Emma Craft, individually, and on behalf of the next of kin of Carolyn Buey; Helen Hutchinson; Barbara Hutchinson; and Richard E. Vaughn filed this action, as amended, on behalf of themselves and all similarly situated against the defendants. Plaintiffs allege that they were the uncon-senting subjects of experiments involving radioactive iron isotopes conducted at Vanderbilt University from September 1945 through at least May 30, 1947 by the Tennessee Vanderbilt Nutrition Study. Plaintiffs, representing pregnant women who unknowingly ingested radioactive isotopes as part of the study, and the children they were carrying, seek damages against the Defendants. Plaintiffs allege multiple federal and state law claims against Defendants Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VU and VUMC); the Rockefeller Foundation (RF); and the Monsanto Company (MC) (collectively, “Defendants”). Plaintiffs allege that they have sustained harms under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985, the Bivens doctrine, and various state tort theories.1 Defendants have filed Motions to Decertify the Plaintiffs’ Class. In these proceedings the Court considers whether Plaintiffs have met the requisite standards of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure at 23(a) and (b) regarding class certification and class maintenance.

Plaintiffs’ claims arise out of an experimental project entitled the Tennessee Vanderbilt Nutrition Project (“TVNP”) conducted jointly by the Vanderbilt defendants and the Tennessee Department of Health, at Vanderbilt’s Prenatal Clinic from 1945 to 1949. In this project, according to Plaintiffs, pregnant women were given dosages of a radioactive isotope, Iron 59, without their knowledge or consent. The project was initially designed to study iron absorption in the uterus during pregnancy. The proposed Plaintiff class consists of 829 women who were all exposed to radioactive iron during this project, as well as the children born to those women. Plaintiffs also allege the existence of a control group class, consisting of 771 women who attended the Vanderbilt prenatal clinic between 1945 and 1949, as well as their children who were in útero at the time, who were contacted by Vanderbilt researchers in the 1960s for purposes of a follow-up study. The members of this proposed class do not know whether they were exposed to radioactive iron during the experiment because Vanderbilt has lost or destroyed the relevant records documenting their exposure or no-nexposure.

In the 1960s, Vanderbilt physicians conducted the follow-up study of TVNP mentioned above, and in 1969 their results were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. See Ruth M. Hagstrom, S.R. Glas-ser, A.B. Brill, and R.M. Heyssel, “Long Term Effects of Radioactive Iron Administered During Human Pregnancy,” Doc. No. 243, Exhibit 1, attached thereto. This followup study found that there were four cancerous deaths of children born to the mothers who were exposed to radioactive iron, while there were no cancerous deaths in a control group of mothers who did not receive radio[401] active iron. Id. at 00726. The study concluded that a likely causal relationship exists between the radioactive materials ingested by the women and the higher childhood cancer mortality level among exposed children. Id. at 00730 (“The discovery of three cases of malignancy [excluding the ease of familial liver cancer], in the exposed group as opposed to none in the non-exposed group suggests a cause and effect relationship.”)

Plaintiffs also allege that the Defendants Rockefeller Foundation and Monsanto Corporation funded and otherwise encouraged and sold the radioactive isotopes that were used in the TVNP.

Plaintiffs Craft and H. Hutchinson state that they ingested dosages of this radioactive iron during their pregnancies in 1946 while attending the Vanderbilt Prenatal Clinic. Craft alleges that her daughter, Carolyn Buey, died of cancer at the age of eleven as a result of the radioactive iron that she absorbed during her mother’s pregnancy and as a result of the TVNP’s actions. Plaintiff B. Hutchinson is the daughter of H. Hutchinson and alleges that she has suffered from illnesses due to her mother’s ingestion of the radioactive iron. Plaintiff Vaughn is the son of Margaret Vaughn who was also a participant in the project in 1946. Vaughn has been unable to determine whether his mother was a participant in the exposed or control group.

Plaintiffs assert that their class is comprised of four sub-classes: (1) all pregnant women who were exposed to the radioactive dosages of TVNP; (2) the children of those women who were so exposed; (3) the pregnant women and their children who participated in the TVNP as part of the control group; and (4) the “medical monitoring group” composed of all exposed women and children who are in need of medical monitoring due to their injuries caused from these exposures.

II. DISCUSSION

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Craft v. Vanderbilt University, 174 F.R.D. 396, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21733, 1996 WL 905349 (M.D. Tenn. 1996).

174 F.R.D. 396 (Craft v. Vanderbilt University) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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