A Philosophic and Scientific Assessment of the Use of Scientific Evidence in Toxic Tort Law

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

The question of what admissibility standards should govern the introduction of scientific evidence in toxic tort litigation raises major ethical, legal, institutional and science policy issues. Moreover, how much scientific evidence is demanded before a case can go forward is a philosophical issue requiring consideration of the nature of scientific evidence and the tort law's evidentiary procedures, as well as the effects of these decisions on ordinary citizens and on affected firms. Addressing these issues will contribute to discussion conceming the institutional procedures that judges follow and the nature and amount of scientific evidence required for toxic tort law. This interdisciplinary proposal brings together PIs from the disciplines of toxicology and philosophy to pursue scientific and philosophic research that examines how courts address the admission and exclusion of evidence. First, the investigators propose to address empirical questions for about 10 leading federal appellate court cases and their district court antecedents since the US Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where the human toxicity of a substance was in question: (i) What was the disposition of the scientific evidence in the case on issues of admissibility of expert testimony? And, ii) What reasons did the judges give for their decisions? iii) What can be inferred about the accuracy of rulings on scientific evidence? Preliminary work on the leading appellate cases addressing i) and ii) is done; work on iii) is in progress. Second, they propose a substantive inquiry about scientific inferences--at the time of trial, what was the scientific evidence on which the challenged expert proposed to testify? This breaks into at least two separate issues. a) From a legal point of view what does the expert's inference from her own evidence show; was it sufficient as presented to satisfy admissibility considerations on scientific grounds, taking account of respectable minority views in the field? b) Given the scientific evidence available at the time of trial in the literature could an expert have respectably testified as did the expert in question? The answers to these questions will be checked against the peer judgment of independent scientists. Third, the researchers seek to assess judges' accuracy in ruling on the scientific issues in the cases: i) whether their rulings suggest they are relatively sensitive to the various reasoning errors that might exist in drawing scientific inferences, ii) whether their rulings asymmetrically favor one side or another in their decisions, and iii) what is the effect of their rulings for admitting and excluding evidence that affects the litigants and the fairness of the process. Finally, the investigation will return to the pertinent philosophic issues concerning the science-law interaction. Answering these important questions at the interface of science and law will shed light on a number of critical issues: on the impact of the science/law interaction on the just treatment of toxic tort litigants, on the sensitivity of toxic tort law to the evidentiary subtleties of science, and on institutional ethics issues in tort law.