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Wasn’t there a school groundskeeper who won a lawsuit whose decision was based on it being carcinogenic? If memory serves, he had a lawyer vs a huge team of hig

Wasn’t there a school groundskeeper who won a lawsuit whose decision was based on it being carcinogenic? If memory serves, he had a lawyer vs a huge team of high priced attorneys who, after a long lawsuit, failed to convince the court. I’m not an expert but courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit-idUSKCN1N638T https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit-...

tptacek 5y ago
Courts are not designed to adjudicate technical issues like this; the conventional wisdom in our separation of powers is that they're uniquely bad at it, which is part of why controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases.
- user3939382 5y ago
  > controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases You might be right but not what I typically have observed. Usually if things are fuzzy higher courts kick it back to lower courts to work on it more. Deferring to the legislature is what I see when what the public seems to want is at odds with what the court can do based on the law as it's written, which is a different dynamic completely.
stillbourne 5y ago
A court of law is not a court of fact.
- epgui 5y ago
  Well, in common law countries, it is the literal job of a first instance court or judge to play the role of “trier of fact”. These are however “legal facts”, and not necessarily “scientific facts” (I absolutely hate to call something a fact that is not a fact, but it is what it is: the law treats “facts” differently than science). Due to courts being very poorly equipped to deal with science, and due to rules of evidence making it very difficult to introduce science into the courtroom, court decisions are very often wrong on the science, and sometimes ignore relevant science entirely. Science in the courtroom is a pretty important and difficult problem to solve. Edit/addendum: counter-intuitively, there are also good reasons why courts will deliberately avoid getting into the weeds with science. Basically it all comes down to the fact that the court system recognizes that it is poorly equipped to deal with scientific evidence. Barriers exist to make the courts more time-efficient and also in an effort to make it harder for the court to be misled by legal advocates on either side. It’s very easy to find someone with a PhD to support either side, or to find seemingly contradictory papers to support either side, and it basically takes an expert in science to recognize a real subject matter expert… Anyway, it’s a mess of a problem.
kuhewa 5y ago
> courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this Since adjudicate just means to decide something judicially, that is tautological but technically correct. Beyond that narrow definition though, a jury trial is not the mechanism to decide a scientific and probabalistic question like whether spraying weed killer caused a particular case of lymphoma.
- user3939382 5y ago
  It's not tautological because of the end of the phrase "technical issues like this". In other words, courts in this case aren't a bunch of laymen sitting around guessing whether this chemical is harmful. They're reviewing the research straight out of the mouths of the most qualified experts both sides can bring to the table. The court's decision on this was the product of the science.
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    No. The court's decision was what a non-expert jury of peers was convinced of by lawyers. The lawyers' jobs are not to help the jury reach the truth, but to do anything legal to win for their clients, including torturing both facts and the often arbitrary rules of courtroom procedure. There may have been evidence presented that originated with the scientific process, but no, the court's decision was not 'the product of science'.
dekhn 5y ago
Courts do not make legal decisions based on technical information. A court/jury could find the exact opposite of what science said and it would still be considered legitimate legal determination.
- user3939382 5y ago
  Decisions like this are based on the testimony of subject matter experts.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    Yes, but it doesn't follow from that that courts make determinations of law based on scientific evidence. Some SMEs simply lie and the court can't tell. IN other cases the SME testifies, but it doesn't affect the decision.

tptacek 5y ago

Courts are not designed to adjudicate technical issues like this; the conventional wisdom in our separation of powers is that they're uniquely bad at it, which is part of why controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases.

user3939382 5y ago
> controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases You might be right but not what I typically have observed. Usually if things are fuzzy higher courts kick it back to lower courts to work on it more. Deferring to the legislature is what I see when what the public seems to want is at odds with what the court can do based on the law as it's written, which is a different dynamic completely.

stillbourne 5y ago

A court of law is not a court of fact.

epgui 5y ago
Well, in common law countries, it is the literal job of a first instance court or judge to play the role of “trier of fact”. These are however “legal facts”, and not necessarily “scientific facts” (I absolutely hate to call something a fact that is not a fact, but it is what it is: the law treats “facts” differently than science). Due to courts being very poorly equipped to deal with science, and due to rules of evidence making it very difficult to introduce science into the courtroom, court decisions are very often wrong on the science, and sometimes ignore relevant science entirely. Science in the courtroom is a pretty important and difficult problem to solve. Edit/addendum: counter-intuitively, there are also good reasons why courts will deliberately avoid getting into the weeds with science. Basically it all comes down to the fact that the court system recognizes that it is poorly equipped to deal with scientific evidence. Barriers exist to make the courts more time-efficient and also in an effort to make it harder for the court to be misled by legal advocates on either side. It’s very easy to find someone with a PhD to support either side, or to find seemingly contradictory papers to support either side, and it basically takes an expert in science to recognize a real subject matter expert… Anyway, it’s a mess of a problem.

kuhewa 5y ago

> courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this Since adjudicate just means to decide something judicially, that is tautological but technically correct. Beyond that narrow definition though, a jury trial is not the mechanism to decide a scientific and probabalistic question like whether spraying weed killer caused a particular case of lymphoma.

user3939382 5y ago
It's not tautological because of the end of the phrase "technical issues like this". In other words, courts in this case aren't a bunch of laymen sitting around guessing whether this chemical is harmful. They're reviewing the research straight out of the mouths of the most qualified experts both sides can bring to the table. The court's decision on this was the product of the science.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  No. The court's decision was what a non-expert jury of peers was convinced of by lawyers. The lawyers' jobs are not to help the jury reach the truth, but to do anything legal to win for their clients, including torturing both facts and the often arbitrary rules of courtroom procedure. There may have been evidence presented that originated with the scientific process, but no, the court's decision was not 'the product of science'.

dekhn 5y ago

Courts do not make legal decisions based on technical information. A court/jury could find the exact opposite of what science said and it would still be considered legitimate legal determination.

user3939382 5y ago
Decisions like this are based on the testimony of subject matter experts.
- dekhn 5y ago
  Yes, but it doesn't follow from that that courts make determinations of law based on scientific evidence. Some SMEs simply lie and the court can't tell. IN other cases the SME testifies, but it doesn't affect the decision.