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In June 2025 ALF filed an amicus brief urging the Pennsylvania Superior Court (the State’s intermediate appellate court) to order a new trial in Gill v. Exxon Mobil Corp. Plaintiff-Appellee Paul Gill claims that his exposure to multiple benzene-containing products over several decades, including a relatively brief exposure to gasoline while working at a Mobil service station during 1974-1979, caused him to develop acute myeloid leukemia. He and his wife filed suit in Philadelphia’s notoriously plaintiff-friendly Court of Common Pleas. The jury found in favor of Mr. Gill and his wife and returned an astounding verdict in the amount of $725.5 million—now more than $800 million with the addition of prejudgment interest.
ExxonMobil’s appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court raised the question of whether the state trial court failed to fulfill its duty under Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence 702 by admitting the plaintiffs’ expert testimony on general causation without first determining whether it was based on generally accepted scientific methodology, and without first considering ExxonMobil’s competing expert testimony.
In a 2 to 1 decision issued on October 15, 2026, a Pennsylvania Superior Court panel affirmed the trial court’s judgment, holding in part that ExxonMobil “fails to convince us that the trial court abused its discretion in any manner.” Now ExxonMobil is seeking rehearing en banc (referred to as an application for reargument en banc in the Pennsylvania Superior Court).
Eric Lasker and Grant Hollingsworth of Hollingsworth LLP have authored an amicus brief on behalf of ALF supporting ExxonMobil’s motion for en banc review. Steven Coren and Matthew Williams of Coren & Ress, P.C. in Philadelphia served as ALF’s counsel of record on the brief.
ALF's Amicus Brief
ALF has long advocated for sound science in the courtroom, including in its earlier amicus brief to the panel in this case. The new brief that ALF has filed urges the full court to grant reargument and decide ExxonMobil’s expert witness challenges on the merits.
ALF’s brief argues that the panel misapplied Pennsylvania’s issue-preservation rules and as a result no court, trial or appellate, has ever examined whether the plaintiffs’ experts applied a generally accepted scientific methodology in a conventional way pursuant to Pennsylvania’s Frye standard and Pa. R.E. 702. ALF warns that when no court performs an expert testimony gatekeeping review, juries are left to sort out complex science through cross-examination alone. As the Pennsylvania Superior Court recognized in Blum v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 705 A.2d 1314 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1997), aff’d, 764 A.2d 1 (Pa. 2000) that is a result which taints “the integrity of the trial process.”
Further, Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 227.1 requires a post-trial motion to specify the grounds for relief and to state how those grounds were raised before trial. It does not require the motion to restate every supporting or subsidiary argument. ExxonMobil identified its Frye challenges as grounds for a new trial, cited the pretrial motions and orders by docket number, and incorporated its full briefing. The brief also shows that several arguments the panel called new appear in ExxonMobil’s post-trial and reply briefs. The panel’s demand that the post-trial motion re-plead every subsidiary argument elevates form over the substance Rule 227.1 protects.
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