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Const., amend. 80, § 3 and City of Fayetteville v. Edmark, 304 Ark. 179, 194, 801 S.W.2d 275, 283 (1990) ("The trial court controls the admissibility of evidence and the determination of applicable law and always has the inherent authority to secure the fair trial rights of litigants before it.")
Where expert testimony is required, this court has already set out the procedure to be followed in Arkansas Rule of Evidence 702, which has been incorporated within the medical malpractice act in Arkansas Code Annotated section 16-114-207 (Repl. 2006). Rule 702 provides as follows:
If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.
Further, Rule 702 "applies equally to all types of expert testimony." See Coca-Cola Bottling Co. v. Gill, 352 Ark. 240, 262, 100 S.W.3d 715, 729 (2003). The challenged language, "By means of expert testimony provided only by a medical care provider of the same specialty as the defendant," which adds requirements to Rule 702, attempts to dictate procedure and invades the province of the judiciary's authority to set and control procedure. As such, it violates the separation-of-powers doctrine, Amendment 80, and the inherent authority of the courts to protect the integrity of proceedings and the rights of the litigants.[1] As the
- ↑ The phrase at issue in this case was added by the General Assembly to section 16-114-206(a) in 2003. The issue of whether Broussard's expert would have qualified under the law prior to the 2003 amendments was raised and argued by the parties; however, no ruling on the issue was obtained. The failure to obtain a ruling precludes our review of the issue because, under appellate jurisdiction, this court is limited to reviewing an order or decree of a lower court. See Gwin v. Daniels, 357 Ark. 623, 626, 184 S.W.3d 28, 30 (2004).
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