General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 17 (1997)

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152

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. JOINER

Opinion of Stevens, J.

sure to PCB's, "furans" and "dioxins" together may cause lung cancer would be irrelevant unless the plaintiff had been exposed to those substances. Having already found that there was no evidence of exposure to furans and dioxins, 864 F. Supp. 1310, 1318-1319 (ND Ga. 1994), it necessarily followed that this expert opinion testimony was inadmissible. Correctly applying Daubert, the District Court explained that the experts' testimony "manifestly does not fit the facts of this case, and is therefore inadmissible." 864 F. Supp., at 1322. Of course, if the evidence raised a genuine issue of fact on the question of Joiner's exposure to furans and dioxins—as the Court of Appeals held that it did—then this basis for the ruling on admissibility was erroneous, but not because the District Judge either abused her discretion or mis-applied the law.3

The reliability ruling was more complex and arguably is not faithful to the statement in Daubert that "[t]he focus, of course, must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions that they generate." 509 U. S., at 595. Joiner's experts used a "weight of the evidence" methodology to assess whether Joiner's exposure to transformer fluids promoted his lung cancer.4 They did not suggest that any

3 Petitioners do not challenge the Court of Appeals' straightforward review of the District Court's summary judgment ruling on exposure to furans and dioxins. As today's opinion indicates, ante, at 147, it remains an open question on remand whether the District Court should admit expert testimony that PCB's, furans, and dioxins together promoted Join-er's cancer.

4 Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum elaborated on that approach in his deposition testimony: "[A]s a toxicologist when I look at a study, I am going to require that that study meet the general criteria for methodology and statistical analysis, but that when all of that data is collected and you ask me as a patient, 'Doctor, have I got a risk of getting cancer from this?' That those studies don't answer the question, that I have to put them all together in my mind and look at them in relation to everything I know about the substance and everything I know about the exposure and come to a conclusion. I think when I say, 'To a reasonable medical probability as a medical toxicologist, this substance was a contributing cause,' . . . to his cancer,

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