Opinion ID: 1224739
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: excluding expert testimony

Text: The court ruled that the Reeds' expert, Wally Baker, could not offer his opinion that Foster specifically would have exhibited signs of obvious intoxication while in the Bar. Although the court did not permit Baker to offer this opinion, it did allow Baker to testify to the visible signs of intoxication that a person with a BAC of .25 would ordinarily exhibit. We review decisions admitting or excluding evidence, including the testimony of expert witnesses, for an abuse of discretion. Burgess, 127 Idaho at 574, 903 P.2d at 739 (citing Hopkins v. Duo-Fast Corp., 123 Idaho 205, 210, 846 P.2d 207, 212 (1993)); Egbert v. Idaho State Ins. Fund, 125 Idaho 678, 680-81, 873 P.2d 1332, 1334-35 (1994); State v. Winn, 121 Idaho 850, 855, 828 P.2d 879, 884 (1992) (citing State v. Crea, 119 Idaho 352, 806 P.2d 445 (1991); Sidwell v. William Prym, Inc., 112 Idaho 76, 730 P.2d 996 (1986)). Idaho's dram shop/social host liability statute creates a cause of action against sellers of alcohol in three specific situations, only one of which applies here: A person who has suffered injury, death or any other damage caused by an intoxicated person, may bring a claim or cause of action against any person who sold or otherwise furnished alcoholic beverages to the intoxicated person, only if:       (b) The intoxicated person was obviously intoxicated at the time the alcoholic beverages were sold or furnished, and the person who sold or furnished the alcoholic beverages knew or ought reasonably to have known that the intoxicated person was obviously intoxicated. I.C. § 23-808(3) (emphasis added). Thus, whether Foster was obviously intoxicated between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. while in the Bar and whether the Bar's employees knew or reasonably should have known that Foster was obviously intoxicated are central elements of the Reeds' case and are questions to be resolved by the trier of fact. In a ruling not appealed by either party, the court adopted for purposes of § 23-808 California's test for obvious intoxication: red, blood-shot eyes; alcohol odor on breath; incontinence; slurred speech; inability to stand; spilling things; knocking over objects; and/or loud, obnoxious behavior. See, e.g., Schaffield v. Abboud, 15 Cal.App.4th 1133, 1139-40, 19 Cal.Rptr.2d 205, 209-10 (1993). The court's main rationale for refusing to admit Baker's opinion was that it lacked an adequate foundation. I.R.E. 703 provides that an expert may only base an opinion on facts or data which are not admissible in evidence of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject. In forming his opinion, Baker relied upon police reports of two prior DUI arrests involving Foster which contained his BAC at the time of arrest and his performance on field sobriety tests at those BAC levels. The arrest report from April 20, 1993, revealed that Foster failed the field sobriety tests with a BAC of .15/.13 which, according to Baker, indicated that Foster was exhibiting physical signs of intoxication. The arrest report from April 1, 1993, stated that Foster failed field sobriety tests at a BAC of .23/.22 and showed more pronounced visible signs of intoxication, including an inability to stand on one foot. These test results indicate, Baker asserted, that Foster demonstrates increasingly visible symptoms of intoxication as his BAC increases. Thus, in Baker's opinion, Foster, with a BAC of .25 at 7:00 p.m., would have shown signs of obvious intoxication between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on June 1, 1993. In deciding whether to admit or exclude Baker's proffered testimony, the lower court considered the foundation underlying his opinion. The court stated, in its discussion of Bartlett's motion in limine: I'm having grave problems understanding how you can relate two prior BAC's and this doctor, this follow [sic], Baker, was not involved in those BAC's, and he doesn't know anything about the circumstances other than what was in the arrest reports.       How do we get the reliability of these prior episodes? How do you get the reliability of whether the BAC's were on the way up or on the way down? How do we know what the fellow's physical condition was? Are there any defenses to the BAC? Had he been smoking? Were the tests administered correctly? ... The court's stance, then, was that Baker could not reasonably rely on field sobriety test results from prior DUI arrests to establish that Foster specifically would have shown signs of obvious intoxication in the hours preceding the accident on June 1, 1993. Not only was a lack of reliability a factor in the court's decision, but also assertions by counsel that the experts agreed that habituated drinkers might be asymptomatic and might not exhibit signs of obvious intoxication at elevated BACs. The Reeds planned to offer Baker's opinion that Foster would have shown signs of obvious intoxication between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to rebut the anticipated testimony of Bartlett's expert, Dr. Sanford, that Foster could have been an habituated drinker who would have been asymptomatic at elevated BAC levels. We faced a similar situation in Egbert v. Idaho State Insurance Fund, 125 Idaho 678, 873 P.2d 1332 (1994), where we upheld the district court's exclusion of the expert testimony of a State Insurance Fund's (SIF) claims supervisor regarding her estimate of SIF's future medical and disability payments to claimant. Although the witness was an expert in the examination of worker's compensation claims and properly relied upon medical reports and evaluations in forming her opinion, she had assumed for the purposes of her calculations that the claimant was totally disabled. Id. at 680, 873 P.2d at 1334. Whether the claimant was totally disabled, however, was disputed at trial and, according to this Court, could only be established by testimony from a medical expert, which the claims supervisor was not. Id., 873 P.2d at 1334. She thus could not offer her estimate of SIF's future payments to claimant because that opinion lacked proper foundation. Id. at 681, 873 P.2d at 1335. Likewise, in this case, Baker lacked critical information necessary to provide a sufficient foundation for his opinion. Without more data concerning the circumstances surrounding Foster's previous DUI arrests, Baker could not adequately link Foster's physical manifestations and associated BACs during the prior arrests to his demeanor and behavior between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on June 1, 1993, the day of the accident. In addition, Baker did not observe or research Foster's drinking habits, nor did he refer to any records regarding Foster's habituation to alcohol. Without such information, Baker lacked sufficient foundation to render an opinion that Foster was not (as opposed to might not have been) asymptomatic at elevated BAC levels and that he would have exhibited symptoms of obvious intoxication between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on the day of the accident.