SUPREME COURT · 199903 / 55

Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael

Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999). Decided in Supreme Court of the United States.

COURT: Supreme Court of the United States
DECIDED: 1999
CITATION: 526 U.S. 137
OUTCOME: Excluded
STANDARD: Daubert / Rule 702
CITED BY: 8,806 later opinions (CourtListener)

THE HOLDING

The trial court's gatekeeping obligation under Rule 702 extends to all expert testimony, not only to testimony that is 'scientific'. The exclusion of a tire-failure engineer's visual and tactile analysis was affirmed as within the trial court's discretion.

EXCLUDED

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Every entry in this docket was written from the opinion itself, and this is the copy that was read. If the opinion does not support what is written here, the entry is wrong — tell us and it will be corrected or removed rather than softened.

READ THE OPINIONKumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137↗

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On this page

The court's reasoning
From the opinion
Grounds argued
Practice note
Terms used on this page
Rulings on the same grounds

The court’s reasoning

Rule 702 draws no relevant distinction between scientific, technical, and other specialized knowledge, so Daubert's general principles apply to all of it. The Daubert factors are neither exclusive nor mandatory; which of them bear on reliability depends on the discipline and on the particular testimony. The question before the trial court is specific rather than general — whether this expert's method was reliable as applied to the issue in this case.

From the opinion

“We conclude that Daubert's general principles apply to the expert matters described in Rule 702.”
Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999)

Grounds argued

This ruling turned on 2 of the eight arguments that recur across the docket. Each is defined the same way on every entry, so the same ground can be followed across rulings that reached opposite results.

Methodology: Whether the steps the examiner took are a recognised way of answering the question asked, and whether they were followed as described. Most digital-forensics rulings turn on this rather than on anything the field would call science.
Qualifications: Whether this witness — by training, certification, or documented casework — is competent to give this opinion. Courts routinely admit examiners qualified by experience alone, and routinely narrow them when the opinion strays past the experience they described.

Practice note

Practice note — our reading, not the court’s

EDITORIAL. THIS PARAGRAPH IS NOT PART OF THE HOLDING AND WAS NOT SAID BY THE COURT.

Digital forensics is technical rather than scientific knowledge for most purposes, and Kumho closes the argument that it therefore escapes reliability review. It also supplies the more useful point: because the factors are discipline-specific, an examiner can propose the ones that fit — tool validation against a known data set, reproducibility of the acquisition hash, documented examiner training — rather than leaving the court to reach for peer review and publication, which fit the field poorly.

Everything above this panel — the holding, the reasoning, the quoted line — is a report of what the court decided and can be checked against the linked opinion. This paragraph is our own judgement about what a testifying examiner should do differently, and it should be cited as that or not at all.

Terms used on this page

Every term below is defined in the forensic glossary — what it is, why a case turns on it, and what happens in the matter when it is mishandled.

One ruling is not a rule. These are the other entries in the docket argued on the same grounds, most-cited first — including the ones that came out the other way, which are the ones worth reading before relying on this entry for anything.

ON METHODOLOGY

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals 509 U.S. 579 (1993) ADMITTED
General Electric Co. v. Joiner 522 U.S. 136 (1997) EXCLUDED
Wellogix v. Accenture 716 F.3d 867 (2013) ADMITTED
United States v. Chiaradio 684 F.3d 265 (2012) ADMITTED

ON QUALIFICATIONS

Wellogix v. Accenture 716 F.3d 867 (2013) ADMITTED
Krause v. State 243 S.W.3d 95 (2007) ADMITTED
United States v. Chiaradio 684 F.3d 265 (2012) ADMITTED
Passlogix v. 2FA Technology 708 F. Supp. 2d 378 (2010) ADMITTED IN PART

THIS ARGUMENT IN YOUR MATTER

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Twelve questions about an expert's methodology, mapped to the failure modes these rulings keep finding, with the remediation for each gap.
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Attorney advertising / expert services. Each entry summarises a decision as it appeared in the opinion linked from that entry, on the day the entry was written. Decisions are reversed, vacated, superseded, and distinguished, and the text of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was itself amended effective 1 December 2023 — check the current status and subsequent history of any ruling before relying on it. Nothing here is legal advice, none of it is a prediction about how any court will rule, and it is not a substitute for the rules, standing orders and case law of your own forum.