Most Recent Supreme Court Decision On Testimony by Scientific Experts

General Electric Co. v. Joiner

The U.S. Supreme Court, on December 15, 1997, issued its opinion in the case of General Electric Co. v. Joiner. The Court ruled that the standard of review of the admissibility of expert testimony in federal cases is abuse of discretion, the same standard as used in reviewing other evidentiary decisions. The ruling resolved a split among the circuit courts on this issue. The Court held that evidence admitted under the standard announced in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. is not subject to more stringent review. Neither the nature of the evidence, a decision to exclude rather than admit the evidence, nor an evidentiary ruling that determines the outcome of the action requires a different or higher standard of appellate review.

The respondent, Robert Joiner, an electrician in the Water & Light Department of Thomasville, GA, filed suit in state court, alleging that his small-cell lung cancer had been caused by on-the-job exposure, beginning in 1973, to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) contained in the coolant of electrical transformers. The petitioners General Electric and Westinghouse Electric manufactured transformers and the dielectric fluid used as a coolant. The petitioner Monsanto manufactured PCBs whose production and sale had been banned by Congress, with limited exception, in 1978.

The district court ruled that a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether Joiner had been exposed to PCBs. The court granted the summary judgment motion however, finding that (1) no genuine issue existed as to whether Joiner had been exposed to furans and dioxins, and (2) the testimony of Joiner's experts failed to show a link between PCB exposure and small-cell lung cancer. The court found the expert testimony linking PCB exposure to small-cell lung cancer inadmissible because the testimony did not rise above 'subjective belief or unsupported speculation.'

Chief Justice Rehnquist writing for the majority examined the trial judge's decision and upheld it, rather than remanding the question to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration in light of the court's holding. The court supported the trial court's decision that the animal studies Joiner's experts relied on were too unrelated to the facts of the case to be a proper foundation for the opinion offered.

The Supreme Court found that, 'conclusions and methodology are not entirely distinct from one another. Trained experts commonly extrapolate from existing data. Nothing in either Daubert or the Federal Rules of Evidence requires a district court to admit opinion evidence which is connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert.' A court's conclusion that there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion proffered is not in the Court's opinion an abuse of discretion.

The value of the Joiner decision is its assertion that although Daubert overruled the general acceptance test of Frye, it did not alter the underlying principles developed by the Federal Rules of Evidence. Those who seek to offer expert opinions to 'assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue must remember that the facts or data upon which the expert bases his opinion must be 'of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject. Further, Daubert directs trial courts to conduct preliminary hearings not only to assess whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid, but also to determine whether the reasoning or methodology can properly be applied to the facts in issue. The Court in Joiner pointed out that the respondent made no effort to demonstrate that the studies the experts relied on could be applied to the facts of the case before the court." [Grudzinskas Jr., AJ & Appelbaum KL. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1998:497-503]