Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
4,695 federal appellate · 2,964 district · 7,435 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25,656 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Kumho Tire Company, Ltd., et al. v. Patrick Carmichael, Etc., et al. (1999), General Electric Co. v. Joiner (1997)
4,695 federal appellate · 2,964 district · 7,435 state decisions — followed in 49 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedDaubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Carnegie v. United States · Bourjaily v. United States · Rock v. Arkansas
Cited together with Kumho Tire Company, Ltd., et al. v. Patrick Carmichael, Etc., et al. · General Electric Co. v. Joiner · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 25,656 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.”
2,042 later decisions quote this exact passage“A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if: (a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case.”
425 later decisions quote this exact passage“both rests on a reliable foundation and is relevant to the task at hand.”
100 later decisions quote this exact passage
How later courts have treated this case
Across 78 classified citations — whether each later court relied on, limited, or rejected this decision:
- 57cited without characterization
- 16followed
- 5explained
Treatment is classified from each citing court's own sentence. This is a running sample — coverage grows as the classification pass proceeds; overrulings are also tracked authoritatively in the case status.