WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court gave American businesses more ammunition to fend off product-liability lawsuits Tuesday by extending the reach of guidelines that let trial judges exclude ``junk science'' as evidence.
Those guidelines, fashioned in a key 1993 decision, also apply to the planned testimony of all expert witnesses, the court said in a decision insurers predicted could play a huge role in anticipated lawsuits over Year 2000 computer woes.
``We conclude that (the 1993 ruling's) general holding .... applies not only to testimony based on 'scientific' knowledge, but also to testimony based on 'technical' and 'other specialized' knowledge,'' Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for a unanimous court.
The decision ended a family's lawsuit against a tire manufacturer over a 1993 Alabama traffic accident that killed one person and injured seven others.
The justices voted 8-1 in ruling that a federal trial judge correctly barred an engineer from testifying that he believed a defect had caused a tire blowout and the accident. Breyer said the trial judge, acting in his role as gatekeeper, rightly doubted whether the engineer's methodology could reliably determine the cause of the tire's failure.
``It's a really bad day for consumers,'' said Gerson Smoger, a Dallas attorney with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. ``It enhances judicial power at the expense of letting juries assess the credibility of evidence.''
But Craig Berrington, general counsel of the American Insurance Association, called the decision ``a sweeping victory for honest trials and honest decisions.''
He said the ruling could reduce the number of anticipated lawsuits over Year 2000 computer problems. ``In the vast majority of these disputes, the expert testimony of software engineers or computer science experts will be essential'' to claims of alleged design defects, Berrington said.
The nation's highest court in 1993 told judges deciding on the admissibility of expert evidence to consider whether the theory or technique had been tested, whether it was reviewed by other experts, its possible rate of error and whether it was generally accepted by the scientific community.
The guidelines, aimed at ensuring that planned testimony is both relevant and reliable, apply directly to federal courts only but most state courts model their rules after their federal counterparts.
A trial judge trying to decide whether to admit the testimony of a non-scientific expert witness — such as an engineer or computer software designer — ``may consider one or more of the specific factors ... when doing so will help determine that testimony's reliability,'' Breyer said.
But the ruling also emphasized that trial judges have broad discretion in making such determinations and that appeals courts can overrule them only if they find an ``abuse of discretion'' — a legal standard difficult to meet.
Beyond engineers, the decision did not attempt to pin down just what expert witnesses might be affected. ``We can neither rule out, nor rule in, for all cases and for all time the applicability of the (1993 guidelines),'' Breyer said. ``Too much depends upon the particular circumstances of the particular case at issue.''
In the Alabama case, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the 1993 guidelines do not apply to non-scientific testimony. Its ruling gave the Patrick Carmichael family another chance to show that engineer David Carlson's testimony should have been allowed in their lawsuit against the Kumho Tire Co.
But Tuesday's ruling said the appeals court was wrong.
Breyer said the trial court ``decision in this case — not to admit certain expert testimony — was within its discretion and therefore lawful.''
One Carmichael family member was killed and seven were injured when one of a minivan's tires blew failed, the driver lost control and the van overturned in Baldwin County, Ala.
Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that the rules for scientific testimony apply to non-scientific testimony as well, but said the 11th Circuit court should first decide whether the trial judge correctly excluded the engineer's planned testimony.
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