Eli Lilly and Co. failed to test a drug’s effect on fetuses before promoting it as a way to prevent miscarriages, a lawyer charged Tuesday in opening statements in a trial over whether four sisters’ breast cancer was caused by medication their mother took during pregnancy.

A lawyer for Eli Lilly told the jury there is no evidence the synthetic estrogen popularly known as DES causes breast cancer in the daughters of women who took it. No medical records show the mother of the four women in the Boston case took DES, he said, or that if she did take it, that it was made by Eli Lilly.