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Use and Misuse of Insurance Experts: Surviving the Admissibility Challenge

By Stephen A. Klein
August 01, 2003

The use of expert testimony has dramatically increased over the past two decades, and insurance litigation has not been an exception. Experts have long been used in insurance cases to help the jury determine the facts surrounding the loss, such as in arson cases. But use of experts specializing in the field of insurance itself is becoming commonplace, as are challenges to the admissibility of their testimony.

The Touchstone of Admissibility: Will It Assist the Trier of Fact?

The rules of evidence in most jurisdictions, modeled after the federal rules, establish a fairly precise set of standards governing the scope and nature of allowable expert opinion testimony. Most states' versions of Rule 702, which establishes the fundamental standard for admissible expert testimony, provide something like the following:

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.

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