The Court of Appeals for the Eighth recently found that a district judge exceeded her authority when she evaluated the strength of experts’ testimony. In Johnson v. Mead Johnson & Company, LLC _____F.3d. ______ (2014 WL 2535324) plaintiff brought suit on behalf of an infant who suffered permanent brain damage as a result of being given a formula manufactured by defendant. The defendant moved for summary judgment asking the district court to exclude or substantially limit the testimony of plaintiff’s expert witnesses. The district court found that the experts’ opinions were not sufficiently reliable/helpful to the trier of fact because the experts did not do adequate “differential diagnosis” in that they did not adamantly “rule out” other possible sources for contamination of the formula. Accordingly the court granted summary judgment.
The Court of Appeals pointed out that Daubert and Rule 702 greatly liberalized the standards for admission of expert scientific testimony. The court said:
“The district court in the instant case violated these liberal admission standards by resolving doubts in favor of keeping the testimony out and relying upon its own assessment of the correctness of the expert opinions. By doing so, it disallowed the adversarial process to work.”
In reversing the district court the Court of Appeals concluded:
“…because the expert testimony in this case was within “the range where experts might reasonably differ,” the jury, not the trial court, should be the one to “decide among the conflicting views of different experts.” Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 153. The district court abused its discretion in excluding Johnson’s experts. The methodology employed by Johnson’s experts was scientifically valid, could properly be applied to the facts of this case, and, therefore, was reliable enough to assist the trier of fact. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 593-94.”