Opinion ID: 2087924
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Rebuttal

Text: In its primary contention on appeal, GWU argues that the jury's runaway verdict stemmed from the trial court's erroneous decision to let Dr. Hoffman advance the theory of Dr. Williams' negligence for the first time on rebuttal. GWU does not dispute that the complaint alleged, as an alternative ground for its liability, the negligent evaluation and recording of the pathology specimen of November 16, 1993 [by Dr. Triana] as demonstrating squamous cell carcinoma. Nor does it dispute that the Lawsons' expert witness statement filed under Super. Ct. Civ. R. 26(b)(4) named Dr. Hoffman and stated that he was expected to render the opinion that any communication by a pathologist or another employee [of GWU] with the surgeon leading the surgeon to believe that there was cancer or a high likelihood of cancer in Mrs. Lawson's finger would have been a violation of the standard of care. Dr. Hoffman was even named to the jury panel at voir dire as a potential witness for the Lawsons. GWU contends, nevertheless, that from the Lawsons' opening statement through nearly the entire defense case, the Lawsons maintained only that Dr. Olding was negligent in amputating without a definitive determination  including by in-surgery frozen section analyses  that the finger was cancerous. No expert called by the Lawsons in their case in chief made mention of any wrongdoing by Dr. Williams. GWU argues that if the Lawsons intended to assert the alternative theory of a misdiagnosis by Dr. Williams, they should have presented Dr. Hoffman in their own case instead of waiting until rebuttal and depriving GWU of (among other things) the ability to call defense witnesses attacking Dr. Hoffman's claims. This prejudice, GWU says, was compounded by the confusion the jury inevitably experienced in seeing what the court had termed a single, straightforward issue of liability converted into a two-part theory  one that surprised the trial court itself  virtually on the eve of jury deliberations. The trial court has considerable discretion in deciding whether to admit testimony in rebuttal. Adkins v. Morton, 494 A.2d 652, 663 (D.C.1985); see generally Cahan v. Cokas, 181 A.2d 342 (D.C. 1962) (The trial judge has wide discretion in respect to the order of proof.). That discretion, of course, must be exercised in keeping with the purposes of rebuttal. Certainly [a] change in litigation strategy is not normally permitted on rebuttal, Allen v. Prince George's County, 737 F.2d 1299, 1305 (4th Cir.1984), nor is rebuttal an opportunity for the correction of any oversights in the plaintiff's case-in-chief. Step-Saver Data Sys., Inc. v. Wyse Tech., 752 F.Supp. 181, 193 (D.C.Pa.1990), aff'd and rev'd on other grounds, 939 F.2d 91 (3d Cir.1991); see Brennan v. Jones, 176 A.2d 877, 878 (D.C.1962) (sustaining exclusion as rebuttal testimony [of] that which should have been introduced by the plaintiff in his case in chief). Moreover, if [proffered rebuttal] testimony would be cumulative of the case in chief, the trial court may disallow it as surplusage. Cooper v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 629 A.2d 31, 35 (D.C. 1993). On the other hand, if testimony is intended to me[e]t something new, which was brought out by the defendant, and which could not have been anticipated by the plaintiff, it falls clearly within the rule governing the admission of rebuttal testimony. Berry v. Littlefield, Alvord & Co., 54 App. D.C. 195, 196, 296 F. 285, 286 (1924). The dual requirement that the rebuttal meet something new that could not have been anticipated serves both to ensure the orderly presentation of proof and to prevent the most common  and most detrimental  type of surprise[ ] [which arises] where one party seeks to infuse new issues or defenses into the litigation. Habtu v. Woldemichael, 694 A.2d 846, 849 n. 4 (D.C.1997). In our judgment, the Lawsons should have anticipated Dr. Williams' opinion at trial expressed in probabilities, and permitting them to attack that opinion for the first time in rebuttal as a separate ground of GWU's negligence was a misuse of the rebuttal procedure. The theory of negligence by the dermatopathologist (as distinct from the surgeon) was available to the plaintiffs from early on, since Dr. Hoffman, whom they listed in their Rule 26(b)(4) statement, held the view that the slides Dr. Williams analyzed not only did not show cancer as a matter of likelihood but revealed  no evidence of cancer (emphasis added). The Lawsons argue that Dr. Williams equivocated in her deposition, expressing inability to state whether any of the three possibilities in [her] differential diagnosis was the more likely etiology or causal agent. But Dr. Williams was explicit that one of the three possibilities was squamous cell carcinoma and that the second, keratoacanthoma, is commonly viewed as a type of squamous cell cancer; she therefore had told Dr. Olding that we really need to make sure the tumor is gone. As GWU points out, the fact that the plaintiffs never asked Dr. Williams at deposition whether she could state her opinion in terms of probability is no substitute for a showing that they met something new when she testified at trial, Berry, supra, and so were justified in injecting a new theory of negligence on rebuttal. However, although the trial court erred in allowing the Lawsons to introduce the theory of Dr. Williams' negligence belatedly, we still must determine whether GWU was prejudiced by the ruling enough to warrant reversal. See Johnson v. United States, 398 A.2d 354 (D.C.1979) (abuse of discretion requires both error and a determination of significant prejudice from the error). We are not convinced that GWU suffered the required harm. To begin with, Dr. Hoffman's testimony did not come as a total surprise to the defense. As indicated, he was named in the Rule 26(b)(4) statement and his opinion was summarized there. He was not withdrawn as a proposed witness thereafter; indeed, he was introduced to the jury on voir dire. The fact that the Lawsons' experts in their main case did not question Dr. Williams' diagnosis could not have left the defense oblivious to the possibility of counterattack if she took the stand and  in the trial court's words  gave a more definitive diagnosis [than at deposition] with respect to the pathological sample being squamous cell carcinoma. At no time did GWU explain to the trial court how Dr. Hoffman's belated testimony deprived it of the ability to establish the soundness of Dr. Williams' opinion. It likewise did not explain  and does not explain on appeal  how his opinion compromised the defense that it offered on Dr. Olding's behalf. [2] More importantly, GWU's argument for prejudice depends on the realistic possibility that the jury found it liable based on Dr. Williams' conduct rather than Dr. Olding's. We find no such possibility on this record. The verdict form asked the jury expressly to decide whether Dr. Olding was liable; the trial court instructed it twice that if you find against Dr. Olding, you should also find against George Washington University; and the jury found both defendants liable. GWU argues that despite the verdict against Dr. Olding (in turn necessitating a verdict against GWU) the jury might have predicated its verdict against the hospital at least partly on Dr. Williams' negligence, since the court instructed that the plaintiffs' were seeking to hold GWU liable for her fault independently of anything that Dr. Olding may have done. But, assuming as we must that the jury followed the instructions given it, see Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 206, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987), this seems quite implausible given the verdict against Dr. Olding and the explicit instruction it received to hold GWU liable for any negligence of his. Furthermore, we have held that a defendant who does not request a special verdict in a civil case will generally be barred from complaining on appeal about the uncertainty of the verdict rendered. Nimetz v. Cappadona, 596 A.2d 603, 606-08 (D.C.1991); see also Newell v. District of Columbia, 741 A.2d 28, 33-34 (D.C. 1999). GWU's counsel did not request that the verdict form address Dr. Williams' liability specifically, even though doing so would have mooted the present issue if the jury found Dr. Olding liable but not Dr. Williams. The mere theoretical possibility that the jury based its decision on one theory of negligence rather than the other, Nimetz, 596 A.2d at 607 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted), is not basis enough to call its verdict into question. Finally, although GWU attempts to portray the trial as though the issue of Dr. Olding's liability had receded into the background by the time the case reached the jury (upstaged by the new claim of Dr. Williams' negligence), that was decidedly not so. The Lawsons' closing argument dwelt only briefly on Dr. Williams' conduct and vigorously attacked Dr. Olding's decision to amputate without waiting for confirmation that the finger was cancerous. [3] Altogether, the verdict form, the evidence, and the closing arguments give us no reason to doubt that the jury's finding of liability of GWU followed directly from its verdict as to Dr. Olding. We therefore decline to reverse the judgment on the basis of the disputed rebuttal. [4]