Opinion ID: 2994208
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dr. Neil Pliskin

Text: Dr. Pliskin’s qualifications as a professional psychologist are not in dispute. He was allowed to testify about Mr. Walker’s post-incident IQ. To establish that IQ, Dr. Pliskin administered to Mr. Walker a battery of tests. The district court refused, however, to allow testimony by Dr. Pliskin about Mr. Walker’s functioning prior to the incident. Dr. Pliskin acknowledged in his deposition that he relied in part on Mr. Walker’s educational history in determining his pre-incident IQ. Parts of Mr. Walker’s history, apparently including his educational history, had been reported to Dr. Pliskin by a woman named Vanessa Harris, described by the district court as Mr. Walker’s girlfriend. The parties do not appear to dispute that her statements to Dr. Pliskin were made on behalf of Mr. Walker. The district court found, however, that the educational history on which Dr. Pliskin relied was inaccurate. Dr. Pliskin, according to the court, acknowledged that, if the account of Mr. Walker’s educational history related to him by Harris was inaccurate, that inaccuracy would have affected his opinion on Mr. Walker’s pre-incident IQ. The court also found that Dr. Pliskin was unsure whether electrical trauma would cause the drop in IQ he claimed to have found and that there were many other factors in Mr. Walker’s life that might have caused his reduction in functioning. Under Daubert, the first inquiry that must be undertaken is whether Dr. Pliskin relied upon a proper scientific methodology to determine Mr. Walker’s pre-incident IQ. The record establishes that Dr. Pliskin’s evaluation relied on the medical, educational and professional histories reported by Mr. Walker and Harris, and on his administration of the National Adult Reading Test, a test specifically designed to estimate a person’s IQ before that person suffered a trauma. Medical professionals reasonably may be expected to rely on self-reported patient histories. See Cooper v. Carl A. Nelson & Co., Nos. 98-4169, 98- 4222, 2000 WL 257140, at  (7th Cir. Mar. 7, 2000). Such histories provide information upon which physicians may, and at times must, rely in their diagnostic work. Of course, it is certainly possible that self-reported histories may be inaccurate. Dr. Pliskin himself said that it was not unusual for patients to misrepresent their histories to him. In situations in which a medical expert has relied upon a patient’s self- reported history and that history is found to be inaccurate, district courts usually should allow those inaccuracies in that history to be explored through cross-examination. The Supreme Court in Daubert explained that the factual underpinnings of expert testimony may be subject to counter- attack. See Daubert, 509 U.S. at 596 (Vigorous cross-examination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction on the burden of proof are the traditional and appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible evidence.); see also Cooper, 2000 WL 257140, at  (quoting Daubert). In this case, Soo Line appropriately could have presented evidence that Dr. Pliskin had relied upon an inaccurate history and thereby called his conclusions into question. [T]he accuracy and truthfulness of the underlying [educational] history is subject to meaningful exploration on cross-examination and ultimately to jury evaluation. Cooper, 2000 WL 257140, at . Based on such evidence, a jury reasonably might have chosen not to credit Dr. Pliskin’s testimony. Evidence demonstrating that other events in Mr. Walker’s life affected his functioning might have led a jury to conclude that, even if Mr. Walker’s IQ had dropped after the incident, that decrease was not due to any electrical trauma. On the other hand, the jury might have been convinced that, evaluating Dr. Pliskin’s testimony in its entirety, his conclusions remained sound despite the defects in the patient history. The critical point is that Dr. Pliskin employed a proper methodology to determine Mr. Walker’s pre-incident IQ. It was appropriate for Dr. Pliskin to rely on the test that he administered and upon the sources of information which he employed./1 Having determined that Dr. Pliskin’s testimony was based on an acceptable methodology, we must consider whether it would have assisted the jury with a fact at issue. Soo Line argues that Dr. Pliskin’s testimony should have been excluded because he does not state definitively that the electrical trauma caused the drop in Mr. Walker’s IQ. Under FELA, causation is a jury question. See Scaggs v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 6 F.3d 1290, 1293-94 (7th Cir. 1993). From Dr. Pliskin’s testimony, the jury could choose to infer that any electrical trauma Mr. Walker suffered caused his decline in IQ. Dr. Pliskin is not required to have an opinion on that ultimate question to be permitted to testify./2 His testimony could assist the trier of fact even if he cannot say with complete certainty that electrical trauma caused Mr. Walker’s decline in functioning. The district court expressed concern that the jury would not be sophisticated enough to understand the cross-examination, the attempts by the defendant to bring out that Dr. Pliskin’s opinion is really not as sound as he would give it on direct examination. The Supreme Court, however, has expressed its confidence in the ability of juries to understand complicated material, and we believe the district court should have allowed the jury to consider Dr. Pliskin’s evidence in this case. See Daubert, 509 at 595-96 (acknowledging a party’s concern about a ’free-for-all’ in which befuddled juries are confounded by absurd and irrational pseudoscientific assertions but finding those concerns overly pessimistic about the capabilities of the jury and of the adversary system generally)./3 Of course, as Daubert made clear, the trial court must also keep in mind the other rules regarding the admissibility of evidence. See Daubert, 509 U.S. at 595. On this record, we cannot discern any independent reliance on the part of the district court on any other rule.