Reading today’s case took me back to Boston University Law School and my first-year civil procedure course, which was taught by one of those professors who yell angrily at students who are unprepared to answer Socratic questions but are really nice guys outside the classroom. (I say “guys” because there were maybe half a dozen female professors, yet women comprised at least a third of my class. And when I argued cases in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts supreme courts and the First Circuit, there were no female judges on any of them.
As every trial lawyer knows, the admissibility of a vast array of evidence is committed to the trial court’s discretion. (Or “sound discretion,” as some appellate courts put it, though as far as I can tell it means the same thing.) Consequently, one of the unavoidably nerve-wracking aspects of litigation is that Judge A and Judge B might reach opposite conclusions on the admissibility of the same evidence, yet both rulings could be upheld on appeal because neither ruling was an abuse of discretion. So, without in any way denigrating the importance of our skill and experience in trial adv
Rule 702 of the Minnesota Rules Evidence provides that “[an expert’s] opinion must have foundational reliability.” This is the functional equivalent of Fed. R. Evid.
