By: Derek Stikeleather

[DISCLOSURE: Although I do not represent the defendant hospital in Jabbi v. Adventist Healthcare, Inc. No. 2071 (Sept. Term, 2023) (March 5, 2025) (reported), I often represent Maryland hospitals seeking to exclude causation experts favored by the Plaintiffs’ Bar. That said, I have devoted more of my professional life to the admissibility of causation-expert testimony under Rule 5-702 and the impact of Maryland’s adoption of the Daubert standard in 2020 than to any other subject. The Appellate Court’s reported Jabbi opinion merits not only commentary but also certiorari.]  

Maryland cannot simultaneously adopt Daubert, as the Supreme Court of Maryland expressly did in its 2020 Rochkind v. Stevenson decision, but subsequently reject General Electric Co. v. Joiner’s bright-lineabuse-of-discretion standard—as the Appellate Court apparently did in the recent reported decision Jabbi v. Adventist Healthcare, Inc., No. 2071 (Sept. Term, 2023) (March 5, 2025) (reported).Because the defendant would have been entitled to summary judgment if the expert was excluded, the Jabbi court viewed the challenged expert testimony in the “light most favorable” to the expert. Allowing Jabbi to stand as a precedential opinion would destroy the clarity that adopting Daubert provided and open a second era of “jurisprudential drift” for Maryland’s expert-testimony case law.