By Derek Stikeleather

With Maryland’s formal adoption of the Daubert standard for admissibility of expert testimony in all civil and criminal cases, the meaning of Maryland Rule 5-702 should now mirror the meaning of Federal Rule of Evidence 702. But the textual structure and ordering of the two rules still differs. The federal rule was revised in 2000 to better reflect the holdings of the Daubert trilogy. The Maryland rule was modeled after FRE 702 as it existed in 1995.

Despite their different structure and ordering, the two rules, which are presented in full at the bottom of this post, share three core requirements for expert testimony:

• Qualifications: both rules require that the witness be “qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.”
• Helpfulness: Both rules require that the testimony will either “help” (FRE 702(a)) or “assist” (Md. R. 5-702) “the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.”
• Sufficient Factual Basis: The rules require that the testimony rest upon either “a sufficient factual basis” (Md. R. 5-702(3)) or “sufficient facts or data” (FRE 702(b)). Incorporating the Daubert trilogy, the federal rule then spells out that the testimony must be “the product of reliable principles and methods” (FRE 702(c)) that were “reliably applied” to “the facts of the case.” (FRE 702(d)). Maryland has long imposed the same requirement through case law. See Rochkind v. Stevenson, 471 Md. 1, 22 (2020).