Why did the California Supreme Court overturn the earlier rulings?
In arriving at its decision, the California Supreme Court reinterpreted and extended the ruling of a 1948 California case, Summers v. Tice. In this case, two hunters fired shotguns in the same direction, and accidentally hit a person in the eye. It was not possible for the victim to determine which hunter had fired the shot; nonetheless, the court had decided the victim’s suit could go to trial. It ruled that, since there was no way the victim could be expected to identify who had fired the shot, it was reasonable to shift the burden of proof to the defendants-the two hunters–to prove that one or the other of them didn’t do it. The California Supreme Court recognized that, although there had been about 200 DES manufacturers, only about five or six of them were responsible for making about 90% of the DES that had been sold. So if Sidell limited her suit to just those few companies, there was a very good chance that one of them would have manufactured the DES that her mom had taken. The
