Case Name: Ephen L. BANKS and Jimmy Oglesby d/b/a Oglesby Farms v. Curlie Darnell HILL
Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Mississippi
Decision Date: 2008-04-03
Citations: 978 So. 2d 663
Docket Number: No. 2006-IA-00047-SCT
Parties: Ephen L. BANKS and Jimmy Oglesby d/b/a Oglesby Farms v. Curlie Darnell HILL.
Judges: SMITH, C.J., WALLER, P.J., CARLSON, RANDOLPH AND LAMAR, JJ„ CONCUR. GRAVES, J., DISSENTS WITHOUT SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION. DIAZ, P.J., DISSENTS WITH SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION JOINED BY EASLEY, J.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 978
Pages: 663–670

Head Matter:
Ephen L. BANKS and Jimmy Oglesby d/b/a Oglesby Farms v. Curlie Darnell HILL.
No. 2006-IA-00047-SCT.
Supreme Court of Mississippi.
April 3, 2008.
Bradley Farel Hathaway, Lawrence Douglas Wade, Jr., Greenville, William 0. Luckett, Jennifer Lyn Miller Bermel, attorneys for appellants.
George F. Hollowell, Jr., Greenville, attorney for appellee.

Opinion:
DICKINSON, Justice,
for the Court.
"We have long been committed to the proposition that trial by ambush should be abolished, the experienced lawyer's nostalgia to the contrary notwithstanding. "
¶ 1. In this automobile-accident case, the plaintiffs attorney failed properly and timely to designate experts. Nevertheless, the trial court ordered that the plaintiff would be allowed to call her experts to rebut the defendants' case-in-chief. The defendants filed a motion for an interlocutory appeal, which we granted. After careful review, we find that, under the facts of this case, the trial court erred in ruling that the plaintiff might call experts to rebut the defendants' case-in-chief. Under the facts of this case, the plaintiffs experts must be restricted to offering opinions to rebut the defendants' experts' opinions, if any, which were not disclosed in discovery and not reasonably anticipated by the plaintiff.
STATEMENT OF THE FACTS
¶ 2. The facts of the automobile collision which led to this lawsuit are not relevant to this appeal. Our concern today is limited to the conduct of the lawyers in the discovery process.
¶ 3. On more than one occasion, plaintiffs counsel failed to designate expert witnesses in a timely manner in accordance with the agreed scheduling order and the agreed amended scheduling orders entered by the trial court. The defendants timely designated their expert witnesses, fully disclosing the subject matter, facts, and opinions to which each expert would testify as well as the grounds of those opinions.
¶ 4. Two months later, the plaintiff requested leave to designate experts. One month after making this request, without waiting for the trial court to rule on her motion, the plaintiff designated two experts. The defendants responded by moving to strike plaintiffs attempted designation. The trial court denied the plaintiffs request to designate experts out of time and sustained the defendants' motion to strike the late designation of plaintiffs experts.
¶5. The plaintiff then filed a motion seeking to call one of the stricken experts in rebuttal. The trial court held that, even though the plaintiff did not properly designated experts, she would be allowed to call experts to testify in rebuttal of the defendant's case-in-chief. The defendants sought an interlocutory appeal from this ruling.
ANALYSIS
¶ 6. A trial court is granted wide discretion in managing discovery and issuing scheduling orders, and an abuse-of-discretion standard of review applies to such orders. Bowie v. Monfort Mem'l Hosp., 861 So.2d 1037, 1042 (Miss.2003). We similarly employ an abuse-of-discretion standard in reviewing a trial court's decision to sanction a party for violation of a scheduling order. Tinnon v. Martin, 716 So.2d 604, 611 (Miss.1998).
¶ 7. It is undisputed that the plaintiff on more than one occasion flagrantly ignored the rules of discovery arid the duty to designate her expert witnesses. She never properly designated her experts and never disclosed the substance of opinions to be offered. Although the trial court granted the defendants' motion to strike the plaintiffs designation of experts, it nonetheless granted the plaintiffs request to call undesignated, undisclosed experts— at trial — to "rebut" the 'defendant's "casein-chief." Thus, by violating the rules, the plaintiff lost the battle, but won the war.
¶ 8. The plaintiff has the burden of proof. Busick v. St. John, 856 So.2d 304, 312 (Miss.2003). The defendant is not required to prove anything. A defendant's "case-in-chief' consists of evidence to contradict and rebut the evidence and claims presented by the plaintiff, and — in some cases — evidence to establish its affirmative defenses.
¶ 9. Discovery of "facts known and opinions held by experts" is governed by Rule 26 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure, which states, in pertinent part: "A party may through interrogatories require any other party to identify each person whom the other party expects to call as an expert witness at trial...." Miss. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4)(A)(I). For purposes of today's case, the key phrase in the rule is "expects to call." The rule does not require the disclosure of an expert a party does not expect to call at trial.
¶ 10. After the trial court denied the plaintiffs request to designate experts out of time and sustained the defendants' motion to strike the late designation of plaintiffs experts, the plaintiff tenaciously argued that, even though she had disclosed neither the identity of1 her experts nor their opinions, she should nevertheless be allowed to call her experts to rebut opinions provided by the defendants' experts. The trial court responded to this argument by ordering, that the plaintiff would be allowed to call experts to rebut the defendants' case-in-chief. The practical effect of this ruling — if allowed to stand — is that the plaintiff would be allowed to call an undisclosed expert to provide undisclosed opinions to rebut opinions which were fully disclosed by the defendants in discovery, and of which the plaintiff was fully aware.
¶ 11. The defendants properly and timely disclosed that their case-in-chief would- include the testimony of experts. The opinions to be offered by the defendants' experts and other required information was provided. The plaintiff, on the other hand, provided nothing.
¶ 12. We find it would be inherently unfair and a violation of our rules of civil procedure for the plaintiff — who. consistently has ignored the rules and violated the discovery deadlines — to appear at trial with experts whose opinions have not been properly disclosed to the defendants, and to call these experts to "rebut" evidence offered in the defendants' case-in-chief. Furthermore, we find it disingenuous for the plaintiff to argue that she does not "expect" to call her experts, as envisioned by Rule 26(b).
¶ 13. If the rules allowed the strategy argued by Hill, we fail to see why plaintiffs would designate and disclose experts. Plaintiffs would be free simply to wait until trial, and then call undesignated experts to "rebut" the defendant's case-in-chief. The only protection from this tactic would be for a defendant not to offer any evidence in its case-in-chief.
¶ 14. This Court must reject such ambush tactics, just as it has in the past. In Harris v. General Host Corporation, 503 So.2d 795 (Miss.1986), the defendant failed to disclose its expert witness in discovery. The Harris defendant argued (as Hill argues in the case sub judice) that failure to disclose the expert was not fatal, since the expert was to be called only as a rebuttal witness. The trial court in Harris "allowed the expert, who was a physician, to be called as a witness, apparently on the theory that the physician was a 'rebuttal witness.' " Id. In rejecting the "rebuttal" argument and reversing the trial court, the Harris Court stated:
, [The defendant's claim that [the expert] was a rebuttal witness profits it nothing. There is nothing in our rules of procedures that authorizes a party to withhold the names of likely expert witnesses on such grounds, except only for the circumstance where the party had no reasonable means of anticipating in advance of.trial the need for calling the witness....
In any event, [the defendant's argument proves too much. If the testimony of [the expert] is rebuttal testimony because it is given in answer to some of the testimony offered as a part of the Plaintiffs case in chief, all evidence of a defendant must be treated as rebuttal. If we accept [the defendant's theory, there would be no basis on principle for ever requiring a defendant to disclose in advance the evidence it would offer at trial, for all such defense evidence in this sense is rebuttal.
Id. at 797.
¶ 15. Hill failed properly to disclose her experts' opinions. Consequently, she may not call those experts to offer opinions to "rebut" anything offered by the defendants in their case-in-chief. Hill was made fully aware of the-experts to be called by the defendants, as well as the opinions to which they would testify. Thus, if she wished to counter the expected testimony from defendants' experts, she had fair opportunity to obtain experts of her own and properly to disclose her expert's opinions. This she did not do, and she will not be allowed to subvert the rule by offering the expert opinions as rebuttal to something offered by the defendant.
¶ 16. Our holding today should not be read always to prohibit a party from calling undisclosed experts to offer opinions in rebuttal. We cannot predict what might happen at a trial, and if one party's expert offers opinions which were not properly disclosed, then the trial court certainly should consider whether to allow opinions from undisclosed experts to rebut this unexpected evidence. We note, however, that such circumstances should be a rarity, since all experts and expert opinions should be disclosed prior to trial, eliminating the prospect of unexpected opinions at trial.
¶ 17. In accordance with the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure and this Court's prior decisions, we find the trial court's order must be restricted to allow the plaintiff to call experts only to rebut opinions from the defendants' expert not disclosed in discovery, and not reasonably anticipated.
CONCLUSION
¶ 18. For these reasons, the decision of the trial court is reversed, and the trial court's order is restricted to allow the plaintiff to call experts to rebut opinions not disclosed in discovery, and not reasonably anticipated.
¶ 19. REVERSED AND REMANDED.
SMITH, C.J., WALLER, P.J., CARLSON, RANDOLPH AND LAMAR, JJ" CONCUR. GRAVES, J., DISSENTS WITHOUT SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION. DIAZ, P.J., DISSENTS WITH SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION JOINED BY EASLEY, J.
. Harris v. General Host Corp., 503 So.2d 795, 796 (Miss.1986) (cited and discussed later herein).
. A defendant's "case-in-chief" will consist of everything presented by the defendants, including the properly-disclosed opinions of their experts. Ordinarily, a rebuttal witness is called to contradict evidence not expected or reasonably anticipated. In this case, since the trial court should not allow the defendant's experts to testify to opinions which were not disclosed to the plaintiff, and since experts are not ordinarily needed to rebut facts, there should be nothing for the plaintiff's expert to rebut. However, rebuttal testimony should be allowed to contradict unexpected and undisclosed opinions provided by defendants' experts:
. For that matter, what would stop defendants from following the same strategy? A defendant could just as easily claim that an undiscloséd exert is being called to "rebut" something the plaintiff's expert said in the plaintiff's case-in-chief.