For decades, California state court judges have allowed juries to hear expert medical causation opinions that would not have passed muster either in federal courts or in other states whose courts follow Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1995), and the admissibility rules enacted consistent with Daubert. California courts have not, until now, mandated a rigorous “gatekeeper” role for their trial judges. The relative ease with which California state courts admitted scientifically questionable science opinions in contentious pharmaceutical and environmental tort cases turned these courts into some of the most congenial forums for enterprising plaintiffs “mass torts” counsel. Remarkably, that is about to change radically, and almost certainly, to the significant advantage of previously at-high-risk corporate defendants.
Sargon Enterprises v. University of Southern California, 12 C.D.O.S. 12935, concerned the admissibility of an expert’s opinion about lost profits damages in a commercial contract dispute. In Sargon, the state Supreme Court unanimously held that California Evidence Code §§801 and 802 require trial judges to exercise effectively the same stringent gatekeeper role against speculative or unreliable expert opinions that the U.S. Supreme Court imposed in Daubert and subsequent cases. Citing Daubert and other U.S. Supreme Court cases, the state Supreme Court held: “Under California law, trial courts have a substantial ‘gatekeeping’ responsibility.”
