Rule 11-703 Bases of an expert’s opinion testimony.

Committee commentary. — The language of Rule 11-703 NMRA was amended in 2012 to be consistent with the restyling of the Federal Rules of Evidence, effective December 1, 2011, to make them more easily understood and to make style and terminology consistent throughout the rules. These changes are intended to be stylistic only. There is no intent to change any result in any ruling on admissibility.

The committee deleted all reference to an "inference" on the grounds that the deletion made the rule flow better and easier to read, and because any "inference" is covered by the broader term "opinion." Courts have not made substantive decisions on the basis of any distinction between an opinion and an inference. No change in current practice is intended.

The 2006 amendment added clarifying language consistent with New Mexico and federal case law identical to language added to federal Rule 703 in 2000. It is intended to strike a balance between an expert's need to rely upon sources of information used in the expert's field in arriving at decisions, but at the same time to avoid using the expert witness as a conduit for inadmissible evidence to be transmitted to the jury and improperly used as substantive evidence. When information is reasonably relied upon by an expert and yet is admissible only for the purpose of assisting the jury in evaluating an expert's opinion, a trial court applying this rule must consider the information's probative value in assisting the jury to weigh the expert's opinion on the one hand, and the risk of prejudice resulting from the jury's potential misuse of the information for substantive purposes on the other. The information may be disclosed to the jury, upon objection, only if the trial court finds that the probative value of the information in assisting the jury to evaluate the expert's opinion substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect. If the otherwise inadmissible information is admitted for such a limited purpose under this balancing test, a limiting instruction under Rule 11-105 NMRA would be appropriate.