B.C. Court Confirms Plaintiffs Must Provide Workable Causation Methodology To Certify Product Liability Class Proceedings

In Charlton v. Abbott Laboratories, Ltd., 2015 BCCA 26 (Charlton), the British Columbia Court of Appeal clarified the evidentiary threshold plaintiffs must satisfy at the certification stage in the context of product liability class actions. In particular, the Court confirmed that plaintiffs alleging that a product causes adverse effects or injury must adduce evidence of a workable methodology to demonstrate that the product in question was capable of causing adverse effects on a class-wide basis. In so ruling, the Court reiterated the principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the 2013 "indirect purchaser trilogy," and affirmed their application to the product liability context. Ultimately, the plaintiffs in Charlton failed to adduce sufficient evidence of general causation, which proved fatal to the certification of the action.