Expert Witness Blog
In 2004 Clinton San Francisco and his wife, Jessie, sued Wendy’s over what they said was a bad hamburger bought in Charleston. In 2006 Kanawha Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib said the doctor who treated Clinton and a food expert witness were not qualified to serve as experts in the case under state trial rules but the State Supreme Court justices handed down a recent decision saying that a jury can hear the expert witness testimony and decide whether or not it’s credible.
The Charleston Daily Mail also reports:
Chief Justice Robin Davis said in a separately written opinion that she hoped the state’s lower courts would take heed of the San Francisco decision.
“All too often this court is called upon to decide a case in which the trial court has been reluctant to permit an expert witness to testify despite the fact that the witness’s credentials qualify him/her as an expert and the matters about which the expert is called to testify are both relevant and reliable to the case at hand,” wrote Davis.
“Rather than freezing like a proverbial deer in the headlights, however, trial courts should be mindful that scientific evidence presented through expert witnesses is presumptively admissible.”