Carbaugh v. Asbestos Corporation: Licensing Standards in the Utah Act

Read more from the Opinion in Carbaugh v. Asbestos Corporation. In this section, the discussion continues whether Dr. Schonfeld, a physician not licensed to practice in Utah, violated licensing standards in the Utah Professional Licensure Act. This Opinion involves a number of asbestos plaintiffs who sought relief after finding that their medical expert, although a licensed and credentialed physician in other states, was not licensed to practice medicine in Utah.

Although we find that Dr. Schonfeld did not, in fact, violate the Act when he examined the plaintiffs in Utah without holding a Utah medical license, we hasten to add that a proposed expert’s lack of licensure status in Utah in a particular field will seldom, standing alone, disqualify him or her under rule 702 of the Utah Rules of Evidence. (See Footnote) We note that this may not be a symmetrical proposition. In many instances, the possession of appropriate Utah credentials may be enough to qualify a proposed expert, but that is not to say that the lack of Utah credentials will automatically disqualify a potential expert witness.

Licensing standards are relevant to expert eligibility under rule 702 of the Utah Rules of Evidence but not determinative of it. The Utah Constitution “vests in the Utah Supreme Court both the authority and the duty to ‘adopt rules of procedure and evidence to be used in the courts of the state.’” Burns v. Boyden, 2006 UT 14, 15 n.3, 133 P.3d 370 (quoting Utah Const. art. VIII, § 4). A statutory scheme promulgated by the legislature may intrude on that constitutional grant of authority only under limited circumstances not present here. Id. (citing Utah Const. art. VIII, § 4).

Courtesy of the Utah State Courts

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