In Cross-Examination of Experts On “Underlying Facts or Data,” Carl Robin Teague writes that products liability cases involving complex questions of medical causation often turn on the “battle of the experts.”
As this battle takes on heightened importance, more and more litigants – citing Daubert’s focus on the expert’s methodology and procedural rules requiring disclosure of the expert’s reliance materials – have successfully sought to review the raw data underlying the opinions proffered by opposing experts. In some cases, the testifying expert relies upon his own published studies and actually possesses the data underlying them. More often, the expert relies upon scientific studies published by others. In these latter cases, the testifying experts likely have no access to the data; the courts must arbiter subpoenas duces tecum and motions to quash involving the production of sensitive data from scientists who have nothing to do with the case.
From Expert Alert, ABA, Summer 2008