Expert Testimony -- 2020



Walsh v. BASF   (Pennsylvania Supreme Court)

Accepted standards for expert testimony

The NAM filed an amicus brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court supporting review of a wrongful-death suit against multiple pesticide manufacturers to determine whether the lower courts improperly tossed expert testimony. The trial court struck the plaintiffs experts’ testimony as unsupported because the experts gave novel scientific testimony without showing they followed methods generally accepted by the scientific community. The Superior Court reversed the trial court, and BASF appealed. This case is important because manufacturers frequently confront expert opinions involving exposure to allegedly toxic substances, and those expert opinions need to conform to generally accepted scientific and medical standards. The NAM’s brief argued that the Superior Court failed to respect the discretionary role of judicial gatekeeping to consider the reliability of expert methodology in a case-specific context. Unfortunately, on July 21, 2020, the court affirmed the Superior Court's ruling and remanded the case to the trial court.


Related Documents:
NAM brief  (May 14, 2019)