Posted by Oliver Kiefer (Guest Blogger) |
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While Madison, WI captured the nation's attention this spring during the legislature's highly-charged budget battle, a dramatic change in Wisconsin's standards for the admission of expert testimony received little notice. In late January, Governor Scott Walker signed into Law Wisconsin Act 2 (Senate Bill 1, Special Session Jan. 2011), a tort reform bill that also changed the requirements for the admissibility of expert testimony in Wisconsin state courts. Prior to the law's enactment, Wisconsin had clung to an extremely permissive pre- Daubert judicial "gatekeeping" standard for the admission of expert testimony. read more
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Posted by Jennifer Castillo (Guest Blogger) |
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If two cases a trend make, then the Sixth Circuit has established a welcomed on of deciding Daubert cases in ways that return to the bedrock principles articulated by the Supreme Court. On the heels of Tamraz v. Lincoln Elec. Co., the Sixth Circuit recently decided Pluck v. BP Oil Pipeline Co., 640 F.3d 671 (6th Cir. 2011), in which it affirmed the exclusion of the specific causation testimony of famed toxicology expert James Dahlgren (of Erin Brockovich infamy).
Bowman and Brooke has faced Dahlgren before. In Babin v. Ecolab Inc., Dahlgren opined that the defendant's product caused fatal birth defects in the plaintiffs' fetuses. The district court rejected Dahlgren's testimony, in part, because Dahlgren got the chemical wrong. After excluding Dahlgren's testimony, the district court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. read more
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