Opinion ID: 556426
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Expert Qualifications Reviewed in Paoli and This Case

Text: 50 In Paoli, the district court appeared to base most of its exclusions upon Fed.R.Evid. 703. Id. at 845-46. However, the district court also referred at times to Fed.R.Evid. 702, either explicitly or implicitly, in two general ways: 1) by rejecting a given witness as being unqualified to provide expert testimony in a particular field, and 2) by rejecting an expert, regardless of level of qualification, because the expert's testimony was based upon an unreliable scientific technique. Id. at 855. Because similar kinds of references to Fed.R.Evid. 702 were made by Conrail in its briefs before this court, and because it is possible that the district court relied in this case on the same reasoning that it used in Paoli, we will examine Conrail's arguments in light of our conclusions in Paoli. 51 In order to testify as an expert under Fed.R.Evid. 702, a witness must be sufficiently qualified and expert testimony must be helpful to the fact finder by providing an adequate factual foundation. Aloe Coal Co. v. Clark Equip. Co., 816 F.2d 110, 114 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 853, 108 S.Ct. 156, 98 L.Ed.2d 111 (1987). Fed.R.Evid. 702 states as follows: 52 If scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. 53 In Paoli, the district court appeared to have excluded much of the testimony of three experts (Barsotti, Zahalsky, and Nisbet) because the court questioned their qualifications. Paoli, 916 F.2d at 855. In light of what we considered to be the liberal Rule 702 qualification standard, however, we held that the district court abused its discretion in excluding portions of the witnesses' testimony simply because the experts did not have the degree or training which the district court apparently thought would be most appropriate. Id. at 856; see also Habecker v. Copperloy Corp., 893 F.2d 49, 51-53 (3d Cir.1990) (citing evidence of the Third Circuit's broad and liberal standard of admitting expert testimony). The district court's exclusion was inconsistent with both the jurisprudence and language of Rule 702 which make clear that various kinds of 'knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education'  make an expert qualified in a certain area. Paoli, 916 F.2d at 855 (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 702). 54 In this case, Conrail argued that Shubin was unqualified to be an expert. Although Shubin is a medical doctor, Conrail contended that he was not an expert, nor did he have publications, in a number of different disciplines that Conrail suggested were relevant to diagnosing Hines' condition. However, Shubin is a medical doctor with more than 50 years of experience in making differential diagnoses of patients and a pulmonologist with considerable training in treating individuals with occupational exposure. In Paoli, we found that Shubin's testimony was admissible under Fed.R.Evid. 702 and, for comparable reasons, Shubin's testimony should be reconsidered for admissibility in this case. 55