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Beck & Herrmann on "Reasonable Medical Certainty": Part I

By Peter Nordberg

Quite some time ago now, we promised to respond to a Beck & Herrmann post decrying an ALI proposal to abolish any requirement that experts offer their opinions to a ?reasonable degree? of medical, professional, or scientific ?certainty.? (Call this the ?RDC? rule for short.) The ALI proposal would abrogate any RDC requirement and demand only that the expert hold his or her opinion to be more likely true than not -- at least in the context of opinions offered to prove causation in tort cases involving physical harm. Beck & Herrmann attempt to rebut three arguments offered by the ALI in favor of abandoning any RDC requirement: (1) that the medical and scientific communities have no such ?reasonable certainty? standard; (2) that the requirement imposes a more demanding standard for admissibility than the law imposes for satisfaction of the burden of persuasion in civil cases; and (3) that the RDC standard affords no effective guarantee of the soundness of the expert?s analysis...continue to full post

Full post as published by Blog 702 on June 22, 2007 (boomark / email).