JONES V. JONES

of defendant-appellee William Jones in the appeal of the rulings of the trial court in this case.

In excluding the testimony of Dr. Betty Smith on the Recovered Memory syndrome (RMs), the trial court correctly applied the California rules of evidence rather than the Federal Rules of Evidence. In a case such as this one where the jurisdiction of the Federal Court is based on diversity of citizenship and tort claims based on state law, state law concerning the admission of expert testimony is applicable under the holding of Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins (1938) 304 U.S. 64 and subsequent cases and the policies underlying those cases.

If state rules of evidence were applicable, the ruling of the trial court on defendant's Motion in Limine was correct. Plaintiff's expert testimony on RMs was inadmissible under California law because the techniques involved are new, untested and not generally accepted by the relevant scientific community.

Even if the Federal Rules of Evidence are applicable, the trial court acted within its discretion and took the steps necessary to satisfy itself that the proffered expert testimony was unreliable and therefore inadmissible under Sections 702 and 703 of the Federal Rules of Evidence under the tests laid down by the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) 113 S. Ct. 2786.

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il 4, 1995) No. C94-1430 DLJ in which a federal judge in California, applying state evidentiary law, overturned a 1990 murder conviction which was based on the recovery by defendant's daughter of memory that he had sexually abused her 21 years previously. In 1995, McMurry said that "Repressed Memory syndrome plaintiffs have suffered several significant judicial defeats lately." The Hillsborough Superior Court in Manchester, N.H. refused to allow expert testimony on RMs in two recent criminal cases because, the Court said, the phenomenon of RMs and the related processes of therapy used to aid patients recover memory "have not gained general acceptance in the field of psychology and are not scientifically reliable" (State v. Hungerford (1994 and 1993) Nos. 94-J-045 and 93-S-1434, respectively. Likewise, in Baltimore City Circuit Court, plaintiffs were precluded from using RMS evidence in, and the Court dismissed, two cases in which two former students accused a Catholic priest of sexually abusing them 25 years before Doe v. Maskell (1995) No. 94236030/CL185155 and Roe v. Maskell (1995) No. 94236031/CL 185156. RMs testimony was similarly rejected in a Canadian civil case, R. v. Norman (1993) 87 CCC 3d 153. These out of state a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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