Expert Witness Testimony Standards
The cases below are important in establishing
the legal standards for expert witnesses. Summaries have been provided,
as well as links to the full text of the case.
Frye v. United States (1923)
Court of Appeals
of District of Columbia
Summary : Defendant James Alphonso Frye was
convicted of murder in the second degree and appealed the decision.
The issue presented for consideration is that defense counsel offered
an expert witness to testify to the result of a systolic blood pressure
deception test, a rudimentary precursor to the lie detector, and
was denied. They further offered that a test be conducted in the
courtroom and were again denied. The prosecution argued that “while the courts will go a long
way in admitting expert testimony, deduced from a well-recognized scientific
principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made
must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance
in the particular field in which it belongs.” The appeals court
upheld the assertion of the lower court that the deception test did
not meet that criterion.
Link to full text of the case
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993)
United
States Supreme Court
Summary : Two minor children and their parents alleged in their suit
against respondent that the children’s serious birth defects
had been caused by the mothers’ prenatal ingestion of Bendectin,
a prescription drug marketed by respondent. The District Court granted
respondent summary judgment based on a well-credentialed expert’s
affidavit concluding, upon reviewing the extensive published scientific
literature on the subject, that maternal use of Bendectin has not been
shown to be a risk factor for human birth defects. Although eight experts
for the petitioners concluded that Bendectin can cause birth defects,
the District Court ruled that the evidence did not meet the applicable “general
acceptance” standard for the admission of expert testimony. Citing Frye
v. United States, the appeals court held that the evidence did
not meet the standard for expert testimony. Finally, the United States
Supreme Court held that, under the Federal Rules of Evidence, not Frye,
that the evidence did not meet the standard for admitting expert testimony
in a federal trial.
Link to full text of the case
Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999)
United
States Supreme Court
Summary : When a tire on the vehicle driven by Patrick Carmichael
blew out and the vehicle overturned, one passenger died and the others
were injured. The survivors and the decedent’s representative, respondents
here, brought this diversity suit against the tire’s maker and
its distributor ( collectively Kumho Tire), claiming that the tire that
failed was defective. They rested their case in significant part upon
the depositions of a tire failure analyst, Dennis Carlson, Jr., who intended
to testify that, in his expert opinion, a defect in the tire’s
manufacture or design caused the blow out. Kumho Tire moved to exclude
Carlson’s testimony on the ground that his methodology failed to
satisfy Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which says: “If scientific,
technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact … ,
a witness qualified as an expert … may testify thereto in the
form of an opinion.” Granting the motion (and entering summary
judgment for the defendants), the District Court acknowledged that it
should act as a reliability “gatekeeper” under Daubert v. Merrell
Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.. The court noted that Daubert discussed
four factors–testing, peer review, error rates, and “acceptability” in
the relevant scientific community–which might prove helpful in
determining the reliability of a particular scientific theory or technique, id., at
593—594, and found that those factors argued against the reliability
of Carlson’s methodology. On the plaintiffs’ motion for re
consideration, the court agreed that Daubert should be applied
flexibly, that its four factors were simply illustrative, and that other
factors could argue in favor of admissibility. However, the court affirmed
its earlier order because it found insufficient indications of the reliability
of Carlson’s methodology. In reversing, the Eleventh Circuit held
that the District Court had erred as a matter of law in applying Daubert. Believing
that Daubert was limited to the scientific context, the court
held that the Daubert factors did not apply to Carlson’s
testimony, which it characterized as skill- or experience-based.
Link to full text of the case
Internal Staff Login