Opinion ID: 1890564
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Daubert and Frye

Text: In 1993 the United States Supreme Court decided Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), which created a new test for the admissibility of experts' testimony. Daubert is not binding on the states, however, because it interpreted a federal statute, Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as opposed to the Constitution. Daubert involved Bendectin, an antinausea medication given to pregnant women. The Court said that where novel scientific evidence is concerned, Federal Rule of Evidence 702 essentially requires a two-part assessment of (1) the validity of the scientific knowledge in question, and (2) the fit between the proffered scientific evidence and the circumstances of the plaintiff's case. The first prong of Daubert is the Frye test, which is the test followed in Florida. See Hadden v. State, 690 So.2d 573 (Fla. 1997). The second prong requires the court to consider everything from the methodology to the extrapolation of data, all the way to the ultimate conclusion. The Third Circuit explained that a challenge to the second prong of Daubert is very close to a challenge to the expert's ultimate conclusion about the particular case. In re Paoli Railroad Yard PCB Litigation, 35 F.3d 717, 746 (3d Cir.1994). In this case, the Third District reviewed the experts' method of extrapolating the data to the final conclusion, stating: We do, however, conclude that where, as here, plaintiffs wish to establish a substance's teratogenicity in human beings based on animal and in vitro studies, the methodology used in the studies, including the method of extrapolating from the achieved results, must be generally accepted in the relevant scientific community. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co. v. Castillo, 748 So.2d 1108, 1120 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000). By considering the extrapolation of the data from the admittedly acceptable experiments, the Third District went beyond the requirements of Frye, which assesses only the validity of the underlying science. Frye does not require the court to assess the application of the expert's raw data in reaching his or her conclusion. We therefore conclude that the Third District erroneously assessed the Castillos' expert testimony under Frye by considering not just the underlying science, but the application of the data generated from that science in reaching the expert's ultimate conclusion. At least one commentator has pointed this out, calling the Third District's analysis essentially a Daubert analysis because it focused on the expert's methodology and reasoning. Bert Black, Expert Evidence in the Wake of the Daubert-Jones-Kumho Tire Trilogy, SE01 ALI-ABA 125,  (1999).