Sappington v. Skyjack, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 federal appellate · 4 district ·

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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The admissibility of expert testimony is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 702; under Rule 702 the trial judge acts as a “gatekeeper” screening evidence for relevance and reliability. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 589 , 113 S.Ct. 2786 , 125 L.Ed.2d 469 . “Rule 702 reflects an attempt to liberalize the rules governing the admission of expert testimony. The rule clearly is one of admissibility rather than exclusion.” Lauzon v. Senco Prods., Inc., 270 F.3d 681 , 686 (8th Cir.2001) (internal quotations and citations omitted). “The exclusion of an expert’s opinion is proper only if it is so fundamentally unsupported that it can offer no assistance to the jury.” Wood v. Minn. Mining & Mfg. Co., 112 F.3d 306 , 309 (8th Cir.1997) (internal quotations and citation omitted).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Polski v. Quigley Corp.

2. “First, evidence based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge must be useful to the finder of fact in deciding the ultimate issue of fact. This is the basic rule of relevancy. Second, the proposed witness must be qualified to assist the finder of fact. Third, the proposed evidence must be reliable or trustworthy in an evidentiary sense, so that, if the finder of fact accepts it as true, it provides the assistance the finder of fact requires.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Berg v. Johnson & Johnson

3. “Subsequent cases have proposed additional factors, including, whether the expertise was developed for litigation or naturally flowed from the expert’s research; whether the proposed expert ruled out other alternative explanations; and whether the proposed expert sufficiently connected the proposed testimony with the facts of the case. Id. at 686-87 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Polski v. Quigley Corp.