December 2, 2020
Janene M. Druck
Attorney Janene Druck contributed an article to the Summer 2020 Civil Litigation Update newsletter regarding the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Walsh v. BASF Corp, et al., 234 A.3d 446 (Pa. 2020). This decision defined the role of the trial court in a Frye hearing, which is to determine whether an expert applied generally accepted scientific methodologies to reach his or her scientific conclusions, and not to question an expert’s judgment or the reliability of his or her scientific conclusions. The Court found that it was an abuse of discretion for the trial court to review scientific literature on a granular level to determine which studies were scientifically acceptable, relevant, and supportive of the expert’s conclusions.