On December 15, 1997, the Supreme Court handed down an eagerly awaited opinion on admissibility of expert testimony.
Joiner was an electrician who contracted lung cancer. He sued General Electric, Westinghouse and Monsanto Co in Georgia State court claiming that his disease was "promoted" by his workplace exposure to the chemical "PCBs" that were manufactured by petitioners. Petitioners removed the case to federal court and moved for summary judgement. Joiner responded with depositions for expert witnesses who testified that PCBs can promote cancer and opined that Joiner's exposure to those chemicals was likely to be responsible for his cancer. The district court, while ruling that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Joiner hand been exposed to PCBs, granted a summary motion for defendants because his experts' testimony had failed to show that there was a link between exposure to PCBs and small-cell lung cancer and therefore was inadmissible because it did not rise above "subjective belief or unsupported speculation."
In reversing, the Eleventh Circuit applied "a particular stringent standard of review" to hold that the District Court had erred in excluding the expert testimony.
The Supreme Court held that "abuse of discretion" standard is the proper standard by which to review a district court's decision to admit or exclude expert scientific evidence. Contrary to the Eleventh Circuit's suggestion, Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U. S. 579, did not somehow alter this general rule in the context of a district court's decision to exclude scientific evidence. Daubert did not address the appellant review standard for evidentiary rulings at all, but did indicate that, while the Federal Rules of Evidence allow district courts to admit a somewhat broader range of scientific testimony than did pre-existing law, they leave in place the trial judge's "gatekeeper" role of screening such evidence to ensure that it is not only relevant, but reliable. Id., at 589.
A court of appeals applying "abuse of discretion" review to such rulings may not categorically distinguish between rulings allowing expert testimony and rulings which disallow it. Compare Beech Aircraft Corp v Rainy, 488 U.S. 153, 172, with United States v Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 54. The Supreme Court rejected Joiner's argument that because the granting of the motion in this case was "outcome determinative," it should have been subjected to a more searching standard of review. On a summary judgement motion, disputed issues of facts are resolved against the moving party. The question of admissibility of expert testimony is not such an issue of fact, and is reviewable under the abuse of discretion standard. In applying an overly "stringent" standard, the Eleventh Circuit failed to give the trial court the deference that is the hallmark of abuse of discretion review.
This case involves scientific evidence, the details of which are set forth in the opinion which the reader may review (and print out) by clicking here.
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