Since the advent of expert witnesses, courts and legislatures have struggled to develop a standard that would govern the admissibility of expert testimony.1 It is the traditional rule in New York, as stated in 2013 by the Court of Appeals, that expert testimony is properly admitted only “if it helps to ‘clarify an issue calling for professional or technical knowledge, possessed by the expert and beyond the ken of the typical juror.’”2 This standard as judicially developed is one of strict necessity, which precludes the admissibility of expert testimony if a jury of average intelligence and experience can understand the relevant facts and form a proper conclusion based solely upon them.3
Notably, the Federal Rules of Evidence and the evidence codes of the vast majority of the states that follow the Federal Rules make the test of admissibility to turn on whether the expert’s “scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.”4 Under this standard, helpfulness supplies the ground for admission of expert testimony. Adoption of this standard evinced an emphatic rejection of the necessity standard.5
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