''Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael'', 526 U.S. 137 (1999), is a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case that applied the ''Daubert'' standard to

expert testimony An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

from non-scientists.

Background

Patrick Carmichael was driving his

minivan Minivan (sometimes called simply as van) is a North American car classification for vehicles designed to transport passengers in the rear seating row(s), with reconfigurable seats in two or three rows. The equivalent classification in Europe is ...

on July 6, 1993, when the right rear

tire A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a Rim (wheel), wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide Traction (engineering), t ...

blew out. One of the

passengers A passenger (also abbreviated as pax) is a person who travels in a vehicle, but does not bear any responsibility for the tasks required for that vehicle to arrive at its destination or otherwise operate the vehicle, and is not a steward. Th ...

in the

vehicle A vehicle (from la, vehiculum) is a machine that transports people or cargo. Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters for disabled people), railed vehicles (trains, trams), wa ...

died, and others were severely injured. Three months later, the Carmichaels sued the

manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

of the tire, claiming that the tire was defective and the defect caused the

accident An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...

. The Carmichaels' case rested largely on

testimony In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. ...

from a tire failure expert. The tire failure expert relied on features of tire

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

that the

did not dispute, as well as background facts about the particular tire on the Carmichaels' van. The expert's conclusion that a defect in the tire caused the accident rested on certain observations about the tire that

Kumho Tire Kumho Tire (formerly known as Samyang Tire) is a Korean tire manufacturer. It is a subsidiary of Chinese tire conglomerate . Kumho Tire was previously operated as a business unit of the Kumho Asiana Group. Operations An industrial conglomerate ...

vigorously disputed. Kumho also disagreed with certain aspects of the tire expert's methodology, and asked the

federal district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

hearing the case to exclude it under Rule 702 of the

Federal Rules of Evidence First adopted in 1975, the Federal Rules of Evidence codify the evidence law that applies in United States federal courts. In addition, many states in the United States have either adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence, with or without local v ...

. The district court took its cue from ''

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals ''Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.'', 509 U.S. 579 (1993), is a United States Supreme Court case determining the standard for admitting expert testimony in federal courts. In ''Daubert'', the Court held that the enactment of the Fede ...

,'' which had solidified a gatekeeping role for trial judges in admitting

. Under ''Daubert'', certain factors contribute to the reliability, and hence the admissibility, of expert testimony, one of which is the general validity of the expert's

methods Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...

. The district court found the

expert's methods not to be scientifically valid, and hence excluded his testimony. This resulted in a conclusion that Kumho Tire would prevail. The Carmichaels appealed to the

Eleventh Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (in case citations, 11th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the following U.S. district courts: * Middle District of Alabama * Northern District of Alabama * ...

. The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court's ruling. It reasoned that ''Daubert'' was expressly limited only to scientific expert testimony and did not apply to "skill- or experience-based observation." The tire expert's testimony rested on such unscientific "observation and experience", and so the Eleventh Circuit reasoned the district court should have made a different ruling based on their legal reasoning over Rule 702 without the ''Daubert'' gloss. Kumho Tire asked the Supreme Court to review whether ''Daubert'' applied solely to scientific evidence.

Majority opinion

The Court found in the text of Rule 702, a codification of ''Daubert'', a gatekeeping function for federal trial judges who had to determine whether expert scientific testimony was admissible in a federal trial. But Rule 702 applies to "scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge." "This language makes no relevant distinction between 'scientific' knowledge and 'technical' or 'other specialized' knowledge." Although ''Daubert'' dealt only with scientific knowledge, that was the nature of the case, and it did not stray beyond the facts of that case. The Court observed that the line between "scientific" and "technical" knowledge is not always clear. "Pure scientific theory itself may depend for its development upon observation and properly engineered machinery. And conceptual efforts to distinguish the two are unlikely to produce clear legal lines capable of application in particular cases." If the line between "scientific" and "technical" knowledge was not clear, then it would be difficult for federal trial judges to determine when they were to perform ''Dauberts gatekeeping function and when to apply some other threshold test the Court might craft for applying Rule 702. Furthermore, the Court saw no "convincing need" to draw a distinction between "scientific" and "technical" knowledge, because both kinds of knowledge would typically be outside the grasp of the average juror. Accordingly, the Court held that the gatekeeping function described in ''Daubert'' applied to all expert testimony proffered under Rule 702. ''Daubert'' had mentioned four factors that district courts could take into account in making the gatekeeping assessment—whether a theory has been tested, whether an idea has been subjected to scientific peer review or published in scientific journals, the rate of error involved in the technique, and even general acceptance, in the right case. In the context of other kinds of expert knowledge, the Court conceded, other factors might be relevant, and so it allowed district judges to take other factors into account when performing the gatekeeping function contemplated by ''Daubert''. These additional factors would, of course, depend on the particular kind of expert testimony involved in a particular case. Equally as important, because federal appeals courts review the evidentiary rulings of district courts for

abuse of discretion Discretion has the meaning of acting on one's own authority and judgment. In law, discretion as to legal rulings, such as whether evidence is excluded at a trial, may be exercised by a judge. Some view discretion negatively, while some view it ...

, the Court reiterated that district courts have a certain latitude to determine how they will assess the reliability of expert testimony as a subsidiary component of the decision to admit the evidence at all. Applying that standard to the evidence proffered by the Carmichaels' tire expert, the Court concluded that the district court correctly refused to admit the expert's testimony. The district court had to determine whether the tire expert's methods could reliably determine what had caused the tire on the Carmichaels' van to explode. The expert's experience as a tire engineer wasn't the problem—the expert had worked for ten years at

Michelin Michelin (; ; full name: ) is a French multinational tyre manufacturing company based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ''région'' of France. It is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world behind Bridgestone and la ...

. The fact that visual inspection of tires was generally a reliable method wasn't an issue either, because the issue before the court was specific to the tire on the Carmichaels' van. But the expert said that his inspection of the tire led to the conclusion that a defect caused the tire to explode because he did not see evidence of other causes. "Nothing in either ''Daubert'' or the Federal Rules of Evidence requires a district court to admit opinion evidence that is connected to existing data only by the ''ipse dixit'' of the expert .e., only by the statement of the expert himself" The district court acted within its discretion to exclude the evidence proffered by the tire expert in light of these concerns. Accordingly, the Supreme Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit's decision to overrule the district court.

External links

*
Northwestern University School of Journalism

Amicus Brief

Washington Legal Foundation The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) is a non-profit legal organization located at 2007-2009 Massachusetts Avenue NW, on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1977, the Foundation's stated goal is "to defend and promote the principles of f ...

{{Kumho Asiana Group United States expert witness case law Federal Rules of Evidence case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court Tires 1999 in United States case law Kumho Asiana Group

Background

Majority opinion

See also

External links