What is the court’s burden of proof? What do the petitioners have to prove?
The standard or burden of proof is a “preponderance of the evidence” or “more likely than not,” as in all civil lawsuits. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit – in other words, the highest authority except for the Supreme Court – has said that “close calls regarding causation are resolved in favor of injured claimants.”(Althen v. HHS, 418 F.3d 1274, 1280 (Fed. Cir. 2005)) The appellate court stated that a vaccine petitioner’s burden is: “to show by preponderant evidence that the vaccination brought about her injury by providing: (1) a medical theory causally connecting the vaccination and the injury; (2) a logical sequence of cause and effect showing that the vaccination was the reason for the injury; and (3) a showing of a proximate temporal relationship between vaccination and injury.” (Althen v. HHS, 418 F.3d 1274, 1278 (Fed. Cir. 2005)) The U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit reiterated this standard in Capizzano v. Health and Human Services, 440
