Opinion ID: 2283422
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: limitation of the scope of dr. smith's cross-examination

Text: The Moores claim that the trial court erroneously restricted their cross-examination of Ford's expert, Dr. Harry Smith. Their counsel asked Dr. Smith on cross-examination about a statement by the Moores' vehicle design expert, Dr. Wayne Ross: Dr. Ross has told us that the risk of injuries in rear impacts can be ameliorated or made better by bracing or maintaining the head and neck. Do you agree with that statement? The court sustained Ford's objection to this question on the basis that it went beyond the subject of the direct examination of Dr. Smith, who testified about the mechanism of Ms. Moores' injuries based on her radiology scans. The Moores are correct that the trial court gave the wrong reason for its ruling. Missouri follows the rule that if a witness is sworn and gives `some evidence,' however formal or unimportant, the witness may be cross-examined as to all matters in the case. State v. Gardner, 8 S.W.3d 66, 71 (Mo. banc 1999); see also § 491.070 (A party to a cause, civil or criminal, against whom a witness has been called and given some evidence, shall be entitled to cross-examine said witness ... on the entire case). But the Moores have not shown that exclusion of this single answer resulted in prejudicial error. Most basically, the Moores' offer of proof is inadequate to have preserved this issue. Their counsel made a narrative offer of proof, stating: Your Honor, I'd like to just make a brief offer of proof about the issue of Dr. Smith's testimony regarding Dr. Ross. On direct examination Dr. Smith made extensive comment on his review of Dr. Ross' testimony. And the question that I was asking and Mr. Strauss objected to and your Honor sustained pertained to Dr. Smith's evaluation of Dr. Ross' opinion regarding maintaining head and neck complex in a rear-impact collision and whether or not Dr. Smith agreed with Dr. Ross that it would ameliorate or make better injuries regardingin rear impact collision when you maintain the head and neck complex. And then one step further, whether he was going to agree with the forces that the human body can withstand when that was done in the range or 28 to 42 Gs. The paper that doctor identified as Plaintiff's Exhibit 119 contains a statement that supports that issue. So we would make an offer of proof of Plaintiff's Exhibit 119 where the issue of confirming that Dr. Smith agreed with Dr. Ross on two premises. Counsel did not read to or summarize for the court the portion of Exhibit 119, a 16-page scholarly article co-authored by Dr. Smith, with which he indicated he would impeach Dr. Smith. Nor as part of the offer of proof did counsel ask Dr. Smith either of the questions that he said he wanted answered. For these reasons, it was impossible to know from the offer of proof how Dr. Smith would have answered the single very general question to be asked of himwhether he agreed with the somewhat self-evident general proposition that the risk of injuries in rear impacts can be ameliorated or made better by bracing or maintaining the head and neck. Nor was it possible to know from the offer of proof whether Dr. Smith's answer would have been inconsistent with Exhibit 119, thereby allowing the statements that remained unspecified at that point to come into evidence as prior inconsistent statements, as the Moores evidently hoped would occur. While offers of proof may be adequate if given in narrative form, they must be sufficient to allow the court to make an informed ruling. Here, the offer failed either to show what Dr. Smith would have answered or to draw the court's attention to the parts of the article in question. For these reasons, the trial court had no basis on which it could have determined whether the article would have served as impeachment for whatever answer Dr. Smith might have given. Karashin v. Haggard Hauling & Rigging, Inc., 653 S.W.2d 203, 205 (Mo. banc 1983) (An offer of proof must demonstrate the relevancy of the testimony offered, must be specific, and must be definite). Moreover, even were the offer of proof marginally adequate, Missouri law is well-settled that when the trial court gives the wrong reason for its ruling, the trial court's action will be upheld if there is any recognized ground on which the trial judge could have rejected the evidence. Missouri Farmers Ass'n v. Kempker, 726 S.W.2d 723, 726 (Mo. banc 1987). The court is vested with broad discretion in ruling [on] questions of relevancy of evidence and, absent a clear showing of abuse of that discretion, the appellate court should not interfere with the trial court's ruling. State v. Olson, 854 S.W.2d 14, 16 (Mo.App.1993). The trial court does not err in limiting cross-examination to matters relevant to the case. Gardner, 8 S.W.3d at 72 (cross-examination may not encompass incompetent, irrelevant, or immaterial matters). These principles apply directly here; in this instance, the court did not abuse its discretion in prohibiting this question of Dr. Smith. On appeal, the Moores have directed this Court to the portion of Exhibit 119 that they say they would have used to impeach Dr. Smith if he had answered their question and if he had denied that bracing a neck will ameliorate the injuries the neck suffers as opposed to not bracing the neck. In particular, the two sentences at issue from Dr. Smith's article state: Injury potential as a function of impact severity can be ameliorated when the head is perfectly braced against relative rearward motion. This notion is supported by tolerance studies involving voluntary human exposure to rear impact (with the head restrained) that reached levels of 28 to 42g. The Court disagrees with the Moores' suggestion that these two sentences go to the very heart of the dispute in seat back failure cases where plaintiffs like Jeanne and Monty argue in favor of stronger seats and that Dr. Smith's conclusion in his paperproperly supporting the body in rear impacts can ameliorate serious injuries in rear impact collisionssupports the entire causation theme of appellant's case. This argument stretches the relevance of these sentences from Dr. Smith's article beyond their breaking point, and the trial court would have been well within its discretion to find these questions not legally relevant. State v. Anderson, 76 S.W.3d 275, 276 (Mo. banc 2002) (Legal relevance weighs the probative value of the evidence against its costs-unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, waste of time, or cumulativeness). The sentences in the article, as well as the single question actually asked of Dr. Smith, do not address whether stronger Explorer seats would be safer than those designed by Ford. They do not address at all seat design or injuries from seat design. When read in context, the passage from the article refers to the self-evident fact that keeping the head braced may have ameliorative effects on neck strain in accidents. While logically indisputable, this at best has marginal relevance to the design issue in the case: whether a more rigid seat versus a more collapsible seat was better. Ford did not claim that collapsing seats would not result in more neck strain than perfectly supporting the neck in a rear-end collision, the comment made in Exhibit 119. The answer to the question asked of Dr. Smith and Dr. Smith's statements in Exhibit 119 about perfectly bracing the head to prevent neck strain were of such marginal probative value to whether a rear-yielding seat is safer for the spine that it cannot be said that the trial court abused its discretion in excluding the line of questioning.