Court Opinion

ID: 9574178
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:03:01.268705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:10.930215
License: Public Domain

Justice PARKER
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s holding that this Court has not adopted the federal test for admissibility of expert testimony enunciated in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 125 L. Ed. 2d 469 (1993), and in the decision not to adopt the Daubert factors as the test for determining admissibility of expert testimony under Rule 702 of the North Carolina Rules of Evidence but to continue to adhere to the test enunciated in our prior case law.
However, I am constrained to dissent respectfully from the holding of the majority reversing the opinion of the Court of Appeals and vacating the trial court’s order allowing defendant’s motion to exclude testimony of plaintiff’s experts and the trial court’s order allowing defendants’ omnibus motion for summary judgment. In my view plaintiff’s experts’ testimony failed to satisfy the first prong of the three-part analysis set forth in the majority opinion based on this Court’s decision in State v. Goode, 341 N.C. 513, 461 S.E.2d 631 (1995), namely, whether “the expert’s proffered method of proof [is] sufficiently reliable as an area for expert testimony.” As revealed in the careful analysis of the evidence in the trial court’s findings, none of plaintiff’s expert witnesses had done independent research or used established techniques to substantiate their respective proffered hypotheses as to (i) how the injury occurred, and (ii) whether the injury would have been prevented had plaintiff’s helmet had a rigid mouth guard rather than a flexible one. See State v. Pennington, 327 N.C. 89, 98, 393 S.E.2d 847, 852-53 (1990) (stating nonexclusive indices of reliability).
*473The trial court relied on both Daubert and Pennington in exercising its discretion to exclude the experts’ testimony as to causation. Given this Court’s jurisprudence governing the admissibility of expert testimony, the trial court’s use of the Daubert factors does not in my opinion render the trial court’s ruling fatally defective. See Shore v. Brown, 324 N.C. 427, 428, 378 S.E.2d 778, 779 (1989) (stating that “[i]f the correct result has been reached, the judgment will not be disturbed even though the trial court may not have assigned the correct reason for the judgment entered”).
I would also vote to affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision upholding the trial court’s summary judgment for defendants on plaintiff’s section 99B-6 and unfair and deceptive practices claims.