The Admissibility of Scientific Evidence After <i>Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.</i>

This past June, the Supreme Court decided Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the most important case involving the admissibility of scientific evidence in seventy years. While some analysts have argued that Daubert will encourage the trend toward more careful judicial scrutiny of scientific evidence, others have contended that the opinion will reduce the role of the courts in screening scientific evidence and permit a flood of junk science evidence into American courtrooms. The early evidence strongly suggests that the former view is correct. So far, most federal courts are interpreting Daubert as giving them wide authority to restrict the scope of admissible scientific evidence in toxic tort litigation and are using that authority aggressively.

As of this writing, eight federal courts, including five circuit court panels, have relied on Daubert to entirely exclude scientific evidence offered to support causation or to find that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law. Most impressively, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, previously the most liberal circuit in admitting scientific evidence, rendered one of the decisions excluding scientific evidence. In contrast, only one court has relied on Daubert to find proposed expert scientific testimony supporting causation of injury to be admissible.