Expert witnesses for jury trials will now be vetted more carefully in Missouri.
Tort reform has been a priority for the Legislature this year, as well as NFIB/MO in recent years, especially after the state’s legal landscape—St. Louis in particular—was named the top judicial hellhole in the nation in 2016-2017 by the American Tort Reform Foundation. The dubious distinction was given in part because of Missouri’s very lenient standard for expert testimony, which essentially allowed junk science to be admitted.
Under the legislation signed into law by Gov. Greitens, judges will have a new standard by which to judge the quality of expert witnesses. Testimony must be based on sufficient facts and reliable principles, and given by qualified individuals, in order to be admitted.
A similar bill made it through legislative session in 2016, but was vetoed by then-Gov. Jay Nixon.
