March 15, 2008

Per Sheila Scheuerman at TortsProf, the "Georgia Supreme Court on Monday upheld the expert witness section (Section 7) of Georgia's 2005 tort reform law." The constitutional attack on the law had focused on its holding of expert evidence in civil litigation to a more demanding standard than that in criminal proceedings. If the real point were to address the disadvantage such an anomaly might pose to criminal defendants -- as opposed to just reaching for a convenient argument in hopes of derailing the civil reform law -- wouldn't the better course would have been to challenge the criminal-side admissibility rules as unconstitutionally lax?