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LexisNexis Subscribers to Benefit from New Agreement with The Daubert Tracker
EVANSTON, ILL AND DAYTON, OH, April 05, 2005 - LexisNexis U.S. and The Daubert Tracker™ announced the establishment of a licensing agreement that will provide LexisNexis subscribers access through lexis.com® to The Daubert Tracker database, the country’s largest repository of court decisions and documents relating to the admissibility of scientific evidence and expert witness testimony. This agreement will enhance the ability of LexisNexis subscribers to research whether a particular expert or area of expertise has been accepted or rejected by both federal and state courts. LexisNexis is a leading provider of legal, news and business information.
The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and its progeny, Kumho Tire v. Carmichael and General Electric v. Joiner, govern the admissibility of expert testimony in the federal courts, so the federal courts use these cases (known as the "Daubert Trilogy") to assess (a) whether an expert is qualified, and (b) whether the techniques the expert utilizes are sound.
To date, thousands of federal and state gatekeeping decisions (both reported and unreported) have been filed since the original Daubert decision in 1993, and dozens of new opinions are reported every week. It is therefore incumbent on trial attorneys and forensic professionals to have not only a historical perspective on all of the decisions to date, but regular updates on the latest decisions. It was to meet this need that The Daubert Tracker was developed. In addition to monitoring the Daubert Trilogy, the product also tracks cases which reference state and federal rules of evidence pertaining to "gatekeeping" and cases considered to be the seminal "gatekeeping" cases from each state jurisdiction – over 165 standards in total.
According to Myles Levin, president of The Daubert Tracker, "It should be a matter of routine for any attorney who is about to retain or depose an expert to see how that expert may have fared in previous challenges. The Daubert Tracker gives the attorney convenient, cost-effective, desktop access not only to cases involving challenges but also to many of the collateral legal documents involved. This information can be enormously helpful in helping the attorney defend or prosecute his or her own ‘gatekeeping’ event in a way that can reduce vulnerability to challenge and guard against unnecessary exclusion.
"And, because the database has been seamlessly integrated with and tied to all of the other related LexisNexis resources, the LexisNexis user can now efficiently conduct expert witness due diligence and research from one single source," Levin added.
Jeffrey Pfeifer, senior vice president of LexisNexis, noted that by providing access to The Daubert Tracker database at lexis.com, LexisNexis has brought yet another significant research tool to its subscribers’ fingertips: "With just a few keystrokes, an attorney can quickly obtain a perspective on an expert’s ‘gatekeeping’ history, combine that information with other LexisNexis expert witness investigative resources, such as biographical information, agency decisions, licensing information and more to create a comprehensive expert witness profile and then combine that information with relevant legal analysis from sources like Weinstein’s Federal Evidence to gain a strategic advantage in his or her case."
About The Daubert Tracker
Founded in 1999, MDEX Online, Inc. is headquartered in Evanston, Ill. For more information about The Daubert Tracker™, visit www.dauberttracker.com.
About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leader in comprehensive and authoritative legal, news and business information and tailored applications. A member of Reed Elsevier Group plc [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), the company does business in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide. In addition to its flagship Web-based Lexis® and Nexis® research services, the company includes some of the world’s most respected legal publishers such as Martindale-Hubbell, Matthew Bender, Butterworths, JurisClasseur, Abeledo-Perrot and Orac.
In the United States, LexisNexis® Total Research System (www.lexisnexis.com) offers an extensive range of online and print legal and regulatory information products, tools, customized Web applications and critical filing services that help legal professionals reach confident decisions and comply with the law.
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