UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In the recently published sixth volume of the treatise Jones on Evidence, 7th Edition — the first hardbound volume to be added to Jones since the 1990s — Penn State Law visiting assistant professor Anne T. McKenna addresses expert testimony and Article 7 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
The majority of the chapters in Volume 6, which is co-authored with Professor Clifford S. Fishman of the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and was published in January by Thompson Reuters, are McKenna’s work and address the crucial and frequently determinative role that expert testimony plays in civil litigation.
Through the lens of the Federal Rules of Evidence, federal and state court expert testimony-related decisions, and corresponding state statutes, McKenna provides an in-depth examination of the threshold questions surrounding expert witness qualification, relevance and reliability of the proffered expert testimony, admissibility of expert testimony, proper subjects of expert witness testimony, proper bases for such testimony, procedural aspects of expert identification, requirements for expert reports under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and other issues that arise in civil litigation regarding expert witness testimony. Volume 6 also includes Fishman’s detailed review of lay witness testimony in civil and criminal cases.
The new volume, which includes variations for all 50 states, is designed to be a resource for any attorney or trial judge who needs to understand the complexities of Article 7 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and related Supreme Court decisions on expert testimony.
McKenna has co-authored Jones, now in its second century of publication, since 2004. In that time, she has written extensively about the civil litigation aspects of the Federal Rules of Evidence, expanding the treatise’s content to standalone supplements for each of the seventh edition’s existing five hardbound volumes.
Jones has been cited in numerous federal and state court opinions and law review articles, including recently by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Longhorn Service Company v. Perez.
McKenna, an attorney with more than 20 years of practice experience in cyber, privacy, electronic surveillance, and cellular law, joined the Penn State Law faculty full time in the summer of 2016 from the law firm of Silverman/Thompson/Slutkin/White, where she chaired the firm’s cyber law group. In addition to Jones, she and Fishman are also the co-authors of the four-volume wiretapping treatise, "Wiretapping & Eavesdropping: Surveillance in the Internet Age," 3rd Ed. At Penn State Law, she teaches Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Information Privacy Law.