Opinion ID: 2175548
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the exclusion of impeachment testimony

Text: Section VII(3) of the trial judge's Standing Memorandum and Order in Civil I cases provided as follows: Exhibits to be introduced, and witnesses who are to testify, at trial shall be limited to those identified in the pre-trial statements of the parties, except as to exhibits that might be introduced, or witnesses who might testify, for purposes of impeachment. (Emphasis added). The first evidentiary issue presented to us by R. & G. relates to the proper construction of this limitation on the eligibility of witnesses, and especially of the italicized phrase. Dr. Patricia Schultz, although employed by Howard, was called as Ms. Brown's first witness. Her testimony, as we have noted, see pages 533 to 535, supra, provided Ms. Brown with her heaviest artillery against R. & G. She testified that she had directed R. & G. to use plastizote in Ms. Brown's orthopedic shoes, and she claimed to have been horrified when R. & G. failed to do so. Dr. Schultz's testimony, if credited, could be devastating to R. & G., and counsel for that defendant devoted a considerable amount of effort to impeaching Dr. Schultz. When the time came for R. & G.'s counsel to present its defense, she requested leave of court to examine Dr. Schultz as an adverse witness. There was no objection from the attorneys for either of the other parties, and the judge granted R. & G.'s request. Under these circumstances, R. & G. had the right to call Dr. Schultz in its own case, but nevertheless to attempt to impeach her with a prior inconsistent statement. Super.Ct.Civ.R. 43(b); Cooper v. Saunders-Hunt, 365 A.2d 626, 629 (D.C.1976); III A.J. WIGMORE, EVIDENCE, § 916, at 709 (Chadbourn Ed.1970 & 1991 Supp.). R. & G.'s counsel embarked on this strategy by confronting Dr. Schultz with her failure to write plastizote on the prescription blank issued to the other proposed supplier, Charlotte Gottlieb. After thus attempting to cast doubt on Dr. Schultz's assertions that she had insisted on plastizote, R. & G.'s attorney continued her examination as follows: Q: Doctor do you know a [prosthetist] by the name of Mark Berman? A: Yes, I do. Q: Do you recall having a conversation about this case with Mark Berman?       THE WITNESS: Yes. Q: Do you recall telling him that about the prescription that you wrote to R. & G. for Mrs. Brown's custom molded shoes? A: No. Q: You don't recall that? A: I don't remember the details. Q: Do you recall telling him you did not specify plastizote on that prescription? A. No, I don't. Counsel for Howard now objected on the ground that Dr. Berman had not been identified as a witness in R. & G.'s pretrial statement. When R. & G.'s attorney attempted to explain, the judge was plainly not enthralled: MS. CUMMINS (Counsel for R. & G.): Your Honor, if Mark Berman is called and he's under subpoenahe will be ... an impeachment witness, and it's my understanding that impeachment witnesses are not required to be named. THE COURT: No, you don't play those games with me. You have known from the outset you were going to call him as a witness. MS. CUMMINS: I didn't. THE COURT: Well how did you know to examine him about it when nobody else has? It came up on your own examination. MS. CUMMINS: That's right, and this trial has made some news in the field of orthotics and THE COURT: Well, you have a continuing duty to disclose. You can't put on a witness just because you're permitted to call that witness as an adverse witness and elicit something for the first time you knew about and having disclosed to other counsel and then call it impeachment. The only witnesses you're not obligated to disclose in this case are people who are genuinely impeachment witnesses; people who are called in rebuttal to things other people raise you didn't know were coming out and then you go out and find those witnesses. You can't play these kinds of games Ms. Cummins. The judge sustained Howard's objection, and instructed the jury that Dr. Berman would not testify and that no evidence would be presented regarding any alleged conversation between him and Dr. Schultz.
Of the various kinds of attacks on the credibility of a witness, impeachment by a prior inconsistent statement is probably the most effective and the most frequently employed. E. CLEARY, MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 33, at 72 (3d ed. 1984). This is classic impeachment. An impeachment witness, by definition, includes one who will testify that the adversary's witness has made a prior inconsistent statement, and is therefore less worthy of belief than if she had testified consistently. Impeachment takes place in two stages. Quoting from Queen Caroline's Case, 2 Brod. & Bing. 284, 313, 129 Eng.Rep. 976, ___ (1820), Professor McCormick has written that [i]f it be intended to bring the credit of a witness into question by proof of anything he may have said or declared touching the cause, the witness is first asked, upon cross examination, whether or not he has said or declared that which is intended to be proved. McCORMICK, supra, § 37, at 78-79. The purposes of this traditional requirement, according to Professor McCormick, are to avoid unfair surprise to the adversary, to save time (in that an admission by the witness that he or she made an inconsistent statement may make extrinsic proof unnecessary), and to give the witness an opportunity to explain the discrepancy. Id. at 79. Professor McCormick continues as follows: To satisfy the requirement in jurisdictions in which it is enforced, the cross-examiner will ask the witness whether the witness made the alleged statement, giving its substance, and naming the time, the place and the person to whom made. The purpose of this particularity is, of course, to refresh the memory of the witness as to the supposed statement by reminding the witness of the accompanying circumstances. If the witness denies the making of the statement, or fails to admit it, but says I don't know or I don't remember then the requirement of laying the foundation is satisfied and the cross-examiner, at the next stage of giving evidence, may prove the making of the alleged statement. Id. The procedure envisaged by Professor McCormick was precisely that which counsel for R. & G. attempted to follow in this case. In the District of Columbia, a prior inconsistent statement may not be used as substantive evidence of the truth of the matter asserted; it is admissible only to assist the jury in evaluating the credibility of the witness. Gordon v. United States, 466 A.2d 1226, 1231 (D.C.1983). Under these circumstances, Dr. Berman was the quintessential impeachment witness; he was to testify to an allegedly prior inconsistent statement by Dr. Schultz which would be used to impeach her. Under the trial judge's written procedures, R. & G. was not obligated to include Dr. Berman's name on the witness list at the pretrial conference. He was an impeachment witness, not a substantive one. [10] In sustaining Howard's objection, the trial judge evidently took the position that Dr. Berman was not a proper impeachment witness because R. & G.'s counsel was previously aware that Dr. Schultz would give testimony which Dr. Berman would be able to impeach. Apparently, the trial judge thought that a party is not entitled to present impeachment testimony unless that party has been surprised at trial. We know of no authority for that proposition, and none has been cited to us. We agree with R. & G. that if surprise were a precondition for the exercise of the right to present impeachment testimony, then few if any litigants would have an opportunity to learn of prior inconsistent statements, or to secure the attendance of witnesses to testify about them. [11] Ms. Brown contends that R. & G.'s counsel attempted to create the need to have [Dr.] Berman testify as an impeachment witness. She points out that Dr. Schultz's testimony that she did not recollect what she told Dr. Berman was brought out by R. & G., not by her. She claims that the [d]efendant was thus trying to create the need to impeach someone by their [sic] own questioning. This contention falls wide of the mark. Dr. Schultz having testified during the presentation of the plaintiff's case that the use of plastizote was essential and that she was devastated when R. & G. used a different material, R. & G. had the right to try to discredit that direct testimony by showing that, on a prior occasion, Dr. Schultz had made a statement to the contrary. The testimony R. & G. was attempting to impeach was not Dr. Schultz's lack of recollection (adduced by R. & G.) but her affirmative testimony, damaging to R. & G., which had been adduced by Ms. Brown as part of her own case. Ms. Brown relies on Morgan v. Commercial Union Assurance Co., 606 F.2d 554 (5th Cir.1979) and Grant v. Brandt, 796 F.2d 351 (10th Cir.1986), but neither case is in point. Morgan stands for the proposition that a defense witness whose purpose is to contradict an expected and anticipated portion of the plaintiff's case in chief can never be considered a rebuttal witness, or anything analogous to one, and must therefore be identified on the proponent's witness list. Morgan, supra, 606 F.2d at 556. Grant holds that a trial judge may exclude the rebuttal testimony of an unlisted witness when the testimony sought to be rebutted was elicited by the party seeking to contradict it. 796 F.2d at 356. In neither case was the witness in question an impeachment witness, and neither court addressed the question presented here.
We proceed to the inquiry whether what we have found to be the trial judge's erroneous ruling regarding the proposed impeachment testimony warrants reversal. R. & G. was entitled to a fair trial, but not a perfect one, for there are no perfect trials. McDonough Power Equip., Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 553, 104 S.Ct. 845, 848, 78 L.Ed.2d 663 (1984). Dialectical perfection, metaphysical nicety, [or] abstract inerrancy, are not expected or required of ... trial courts. Guaranty Dev. Co. v. Liberstein, 83 A.2d 669, 671 (D.C.1951) (quoting Dallas Ry. & Terminal Co. v. Sullivan, 108 F.2d 581, 584 (5th Cir.1940)). Our aim in assessing whether trial court error requires reversal must be to do substantial justice, and [t]he court at every stage of the proceeding must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding which does not affect the substantial rights of the parties. Super.Ct.Civ.R. 61. Rule 61 is identical to its federal counterpart. Although Rule 61, FED.R.CIV.P. applies by its terms only to trial courts, it is well settled that appellate courts should act in accordance with [its] salutary policy. McDonough Power Equip., Inc., supra, 464 U.S. at 554, 104 S.Ct. at 849. We construe our Superior Court's Rule 61 in the same manner. Although the courts of this jurisdiction have frequently addressed the concept of harmless error in the context of criminal appeals, they have rarely done so in civil litigation. In Chichester Chem. Co. v. United States, 60 App.D.C. 134, 49 F.2d 516 (1931), the court articulated an exacting test for finding trial court error harmless, stating that it is only when it is certain that the error assigned could not have prejudiced the complaining party that the rulethat it is no ground for reversalis applicable. Id. at 137, 49 F.2d at 519 (emphasis added). This court followed Chichester Chemical, as it was required to do, in Fowel v. Insurance Bldg., Inc., 32 A.2d 100 (D.C.1943), quoting in its entirety the passage requiring a measure of certitude which, while always desirable, is not often attainable. These decisions are consistent with the older cases in the Supreme Court. That Court held in Smiths v. Shoemaker, 84 U.S. (17 Wall.) 630, 639, 21 L.Ed. 717 (1873), that for trial court error to be found harmless, it must appear so clear as to be beyond doubt that the error did not and could not have prejudiced the right of the party (emphasis added). Accord, Crawford v. United States, 212 U.S. 183, 203, 29 S.Ct. 260, 267, 53 L.Ed. 465 (1909); Deery v. Cray, 72 U.S. (5 Wall.) 795, 807-08, 18 L.Ed. 653 (1866). Sometimes, courts went even further; [f]or a long period in legal history it was supposed that any error in the course of a proceeding, no matter how minor or technical, required either the trial court or the appellate court to order a new trial. 11 C. WRIGHT & A. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 2881, at 271 (1973 & 1991 Supp.). Viewing appellate courts as impregnable citadels of technicality, Kavanagh, Improvement of Administration of Criminal Justice by Exercise of Judicial Power, 11 A.B.A.J. 217, 222 (1925), (quoted in WRIGHT & MILLER, supra, § 2881, at 271), legislatures and courts promulgated statutes and rules, such as Super.Ct.Civ.R. 61, which proscribed reversal unless the error complained of affected the appellant's substantial rights. In the seminal case of Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-65, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1247-48, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946), the Court, speaking through Justice Rutledge, articulated the standard to be applied pursuant to the 1919 federal harmless error statute as follows: If, when all is said and done, the conviction is sure that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very slight effect, the verdict and the judgment should stand, except perhaps where the departure is from a constitutional norm or a specific command of Congress.... But if one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. (Citation and footnote omitted). Fair assurance was substituted for absolute certainty, as required in the earlier cases. The test is not whether the judgment was swayed at all, but whether it was substantially swayed. Kotteakos was a criminal case, and it is not self-evident that its teachings should apply with exactitude to civil litigation. Indeed, the Senate Judiciary Committee initially recommended that the harmless error statute discussed in Kotteakos [12] apply exclusively to criminal cases. See S.Rep. No. 1066, 62d Cong. 2d Sess. (1912), cited in Kotteakos, supra, 328 U.S. at 762 n. 15, 66 S.Ct. at 1247 n. 15. As the Court observed in Kotteakos, [t]he statute in terms makes no distinction between civil and criminal causes. But this does not mean that the same criteria shall always be applied regardless of this difference.... Although the final form of the legislation was designed, and frequently has been effective, to avoid some of the absurdities by which skillful manipulation of procedural rules had enabled the guilty to escape just punishment, [the harmless error statute] did not make irrelevant the fact that a person is on trial for his life or his liberty. It did not require the same judgment in such a case as in one involving only some question of civil liability. Id. at 762-63, 66 S.Ct. at 1246-47 (footnote omitted). The language of Super.Ct.Civ.R. 61 is, however, substantially identical in relevant respects to the criminal harmless error rule, Super.Ct.Crim.R. 52(a). Recognizing that, in the crunch, error that might be harmless in a civil case could be held prejudicial in a criminal prosecution in which the defendant's personal liberty is on the line, we agree that the general discussion [in Kotteakos ] of the attitude that judges should take seems fully applicable to civil litigation. 11 WRIGHT & MILLER, supra, § 2883, at 276. The problem of prejudicial error is a problem in professional psychology. No rules can be framed which will solve it, for rules can only be drawn in general terms, and it is in the interpretation of the rules that the difficulty comes. Sunderland, The Problem of Appellate Review, 5 TEX.L.REV. 126, 146-47 (1927) (quoted in 11 WRIGHT & MILLER, supra, § 2883, at 275 & n. 19). [13] In spite of the older decisions proclaiming the need for certainty, a commodity which is hard to achieve in any event, [14] we think that fair assurance as in Kotteakos, supra, represents a fair and workable standard [15] which we can profitably apply to this record. We cannot say with fair assurance that the judge's ruling precluding R. & G. from calling an impeachment witness did not substantially sway the jury; Kotteakos, supra, 328 U.S. at 765, 66 S.Ct. at 1248, nor is it highly probable that the error did not affect the verdict. THE RIDDLE OF HARMLESS ERROR, supra, at 35. Dr. Schultz was the only witness who testified that R. & G. was directed to use plastizote in preparing Ms. Brown's orthopedic shoes. Without that testimony, we think it unlikely that the case could even have gone to the jury, for R. & G. was a supplier, not a physician, and the gravamen of the case against it was its alleged failure to do what Dr. Schultz had prescribed. Moreover, although other experts called by Ms. Brown testified that the applicable standard of care required the use of plastizote, Dr. Schultz was the only witness so testifying who actually treated Ms. Brown. Her testimony was critical to the case against R. & G., and her credibility was one of the principal issues at the trial. If R. & G. had been permitted to present Dr. Berman's testimony, it may well be that the jury would not have credited Dr. Schultz either with respect to whether she had prescribed plastizote or with respect to the importance which she attributed at trial to the use of that material in fabricating a diabetic's orthopedic shoe. [16] Here, as in Walker v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 412 F.2d 60, 64 (2d Cir.1969). the trial court prohibited proper impeachment of the plaintiff's key witness. Since virtually the whole of plaintiff's case was based on [Dr. Schultz'] testimony, the error can only be regarded as material and significant. Where credibility choices play a dominant role, our adversary system is designed to test the truth of evidence given at a trial. Wright Root Beer Co. of New Orleans v. Dr. Pepper Co., 414 F.2d 887, 891 (5th Cir.1969). The unintentional skewing of that basic concept by the exclusion of Dr. Berman's testimony was prejudicial error. Id. Moreover, the case against R. & G. was less than overwhelming. Dr. Schultz did not write plastizote on the prescription form issued to Charlotte Gottlieb, and it might reasonably be inferred that it was unlikely that she did so in the form designed for use by R. & G.. There was no corroboration of her claim that she directed R. & G. to use that material. There were also problems with Ms. Brown's case against R. & G. in relation to the issue of causation. By her own testimony, Ms. Brown only wore the shoes provided to her by R. & G. on two separate days for a total of a little more than two hours. The evidence showed that she smoked, that she improvidently applied a hot water bottle to her foot, that she failed to follow medical advice, and that she checked out of the hospital when further treatment was indicated. The judge also found that Howard was negligent, and this finding potentially complicated (although it did not control) the question of proximate cause. In determining whether error was harmless, we must look to the closeness of the case, the centrality of the issue affected by the error, and any steps taken to mitigate the effects of the error. Clark v. United States, 593 A.2d 186, 193 (D.C.1991). This case was close, the error went to a central issue (the credibility of Dr. Schultz), and no remedial steps were taken. The error was prejudicial, not harmless.