Court Opinion

ID: 9872687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 21:11:49.61853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:47:35.536547
License: Public Domain

Kahn, J.
(concurring). I join fully in the opinion of the majority, and write separately solely to address an important issue of our state’s jurisprudence.
In contrast to the federal government and most of our sister states, New York does not base its law of evidence on statutorily codified rules. Instead, we rely principally upon the common law, as articulated by the Court of Appeals.
We additionally part ways with the majority of other jurisdictions in how our courts determine the admissibility of expert scientific testimony. Thus, we have not adopted any rules addressing the reliability of expert witness testimony comparable to those codified in Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) rule 702.1 Further, we are among the small minority of states that have not adopted the rule of Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (509 US 579 [1993]) requiring that all scientific testimony, whether novel or not, be based upon reliable scientific principles properly applied, and charging the trial judge to act as the gatekeeper to ensure that result. Under Daubert, the expert witness must explain the application of the particular scientific principle to the facts at hand, ruling out alternative hypotheses and arriving at logical conclusions. Neither speculation nor generalized conclusions will pass muster under Daubert.
*241New York has consistently resisted adopting the Daubert standard as a means of assuring the reliability of scientific evidence put before our juries (see e.g. Giordano v Market Am., Inc., 15 NY3d 590, 601 [2010]; People v LeGrand, 8 NY3d 449 [2007]; People v Lee, 96 NY2d 157 [2001]; People v Wesley, 83 NY2d 417, 435-436 [1994, Kaye, Ch. J., concurring]). With respect to the admissibility and sufficiency of evidence to prove causation in a long-latency toxic tort case, however, the New York Court of Appeals established its own standard a decade ago in Parker v Mobil Oil Corp. (7 NY3d 434 [2006]). There the Court acknowledged the tension present in cases involving long-latency personal injuries from exposure over time to toxic substances:
“As with any other type of expert evidence, we recognize the danger in allowing unreliable or speculative information (or ‘junk science’) to go before the jury with the weight of an impressively credentialed expert behind it. But, it is similarly inappropriate to set an insurmountable standard that would effectively deprive toxic tort plaintiffs of their day in court. It is necessary to find a balance between these two extremes” (Parker, 7 NY3d at 447).
To achieve this balance, the Court announced the following standard:
“It is well-established that an opinion on causation should set forth a plaintiff’s exposure to a toxin, that the toxin is capable of causing the particular illness (general causation) and that plaintiff was exposed to sufficient levels of the toxin to cause the illness (specific causation) .... [It] is not always necessary for a plaintiff to quantify exposure levels precisely or use the dose-response relationship, provided that whatever methods an expert uses to establish causation are generally accepted in the scientific community” {Parker, 7 NY3d at 448 [citations omitted]).
The Parker Court went on to suggest a nonexclusive list of alternative methods for proving causation in such cases that could satisfy its balancing test, including establishing the intensity of the plaintiff’s exposure, estimations using mathematical modeling, or, in an appropriate case, qualitative comparison of the plaintiff’s particular exposure level to the exposure levels of subjects in other studies (Parker, 7 NY3d at *242449). Reviewing the case before it, however, the Court of Appeals, while acknowledging the plaintiff’s exposure to the carcinogenic substance, rejected the plaintiff’s expert evidence as too “general, subjective and conclusory,” and lacking in specific relation to the plaintiff’s exposures, to satisfy its announced standard (id.).
In this case, the dissent urges that this Court create an exception to the settled rule of Parker as to proof of causation to permit a finding of liability in asbestos friction product use cases through a plaintiff’s unquantified cumulative exposures to “visible dust” which contained an unknown amount of chrysotile asbestos fibers,2 based principally on the scientifically settled general association between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma and without evidence of either general or specific causation. However, were we to carve such a gaping hole in the Parker standard of proof on causation, eviscerating its fundamental evidentiary requirements, we would effectively overrule the Court of Appeals’ holding in Cornell v 360 W. 51st St. Realty, LLC (22 NY3d 762, 783 [2014]), which explained that references to risk, linkage and association are not sufficient in themselves to establish causation in long-latency toxic exposure cases.
The approach urged by the dissent, regardless of its laudable goal in seeking compensation for injured workers, is not available to us. In view of the singular role of the Court of Appeals in advancing policy changes in the common law (cf. People v Keta, 165 AD2d 172, 177 [2d Dept 1991] [recognizing “the policy and rule-making function traditionally perceived as the exclusive domain of the Court of Appeals”], revd on other grounds sub nom. People v Scott, 79 NY2d 474 [1992]; Hopkins, The Role of an Intermediate Appellate Court, 41 Brook L Rev 459, 460, 467 [1974-1975]), and given the key role the Parker rule plays in our state’s evidence jurisprudence on expert witness testimony, any change in this regard must be made by the Court of Appeals.

. FRE 702 provides:
“A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if:
“(a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue;
“(b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data;
“(c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and
“(d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case.”

. Typically, chrysotile asbestos fibers are less than two microns in length and are, therefore, not visible to the naked eye (see BioMed Central, Environmental Health, Quantification of Short and Long Asbestos Fibers to Assess Asbestos Exposure: A Review of Fiber Size Toxicity [July 21, 2014], available at https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.eom/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-13-59 [accessed Feb. 10, 2017]).