Opinion ID: 616117
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Dr. Rizzoli's Testimony

Text: A party seeking to introduce expert testimony at trial must disclose to the opposing party a written report that includes a complete statement of all opinions the witness will express and the basis and reasons for them. Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(a)(2)(B). Failure to comply with that rule may preclude the party from, us[ing] that witness or relevant expert information to supply evidence on a motion, at a hearing, or at trial, unless the failure was substantially justified or is harmless. Esposito v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 590 F.3d 72, 77 (1st Cir.2009) (describing how violations of Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(a)(2) may implicate the sanctions of Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(c)(1)) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(c)(1)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Though the baseline sanction for failure to comply with Rule 26 is preclusion, preclusion is not a strictly mechanical exercise. Id. (quoting Santiago-Diaz v. Laboratorio Clínico Y De Referencia Del Este, 456 F.3d 272, 276 (1st Cir.2006)). The district court has the discretion to choose a lesser sanction. Id. at 77-78 (citing Laplace-Bayard v. Batlle, 295 F.3d 157 (1st Cir.2002) to explain the district court's broad discretion in meting out . . . sanctions for Rule 26 violations, id. at 162). For example, allowance of a continuance to permit greater preparation for cross-examination of an expert may be appropriate. Newell Puerto Rico, Ltd. v. Rubbermaid Inc., 20 F.3d 15, 22 (1st Cir. 1994). Together Rules 26 and 37 operate to prevent the unfair tactical advantage that can be gained by failing to unveil an expert in a timely fashion, Poulis-Minott v. Smith, 388 F.3d 354, 358 (1st Cir.2004), and are designed to facilitate a fair contest with the basic issues and facts disclosed to the fullest practical extent. Id. (quoting Lohnes v. Level 3 Commc'ns, 272 F.3d 49, 60 (1st Cir.2001)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Gay contends that Dr. Rizzoli exceeded the bounds of his report when he testified that the skull fracture was not a major cause of Anita's death because it was not a mortal wound. [5] He contends that this testimony was inconsistent with Dr. Rizzoli's previous description of Anita's skull fracture as a significant and serious injury. Gay submits that Dr. Rizzoli's report was limited to the conclusion that the stroke was a contributing cause of Anita's death, which implied nothing about the relative significance of the skull fracture or the dominant cause of death. To bolster this argument, Gay relies on Dr. Rizzoli's statement that it is difficult to separate out which aspect of this situation related to which issue. Gay argues that Dr. Rizzoli's testimony should have been limited to just opining that the stroke contributed to Anita's death, nothing more. Gay claims that when Dr. Rizzoli testified that the skull fracture was not a major cause of death, he necessarily implied that the stroke [Anita] allegedly suffered was the dominant cause of her death. Because that conclusion was never disclosed in the expert report, Gay concludes, the district court erred in allowing this testimony. The district court disagreed, finding that Dr. Rizzoli's report adequately presaged his trial testimony and, therefore, that Rule 26 was satisfied. The court determined that Dr. Rizzoli's report was sufficiently thorough 1) to indicate the general boundaries of his direct examination and 2) to put the plaintiff on notice that the stroke was the primary cause of Ms. Gay's death  (emphasis added). After carefully reviewing both the expert report and the trial testimony, we readily conclude that the district court did not err in admitting Dr. Rizzoli's testimony, because it fell within the scope of his previously disclosed report. Neither the expert report nor the trial testimony are as limited as Gay claims. Dr. Rizzoli's expert report concluded, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty . . . that [Anita] suffered a cerebral hemorrhage which led to unconsciousness and that this event led to a fall with head injury. To support that conclusion, Dr. Rizzoli cited Anita's preexisting hypertension, her reported nausea before the events, which is symptomatic of deep brain hemorrhage, her significant injury, which suggested that she had lost consciousness before falling, and the amount of bleeding in the autopsy report, which seemed out of proportion to that which could be expected on the basis of trauma alone. The district court summarized Dr. Rizzoli's report as containing at least three relevant conclusions: 1) that cerebral hemorrhage presented in this case seems certain; 2) the amount of bleeding described seems out of proportion to that which could be expected on the basis of trauma alone; and 3) it is my opinion . . . that a preceding hypertensive cerebral hemorrhage did in fact lead to unconsciousness, that as a result the patient fell sustaining a serious head injury, and that the hypertensive cerebral hemorrhage was a contributing cause of death. Gay focuses on the last portion of the third conclusionthat the hypertensive cerebral hemorrhage was a contributing cause of deathto argue that Dr. Rizzoli had no opinion about whether the stroke was the dominant cause of Anita's death, but instead had only concluded that the stroke was a contributing cause of her death. Gay's argument asks us to all but ignore the information conveyed by the other conclusions. It is clear that Dr. Rizzoli's opinion expressed in the report was that fundamentally Anita suffered from a stroke. While his report suggested that both the stroke and the skull fracture contributed to Anita's death, and never explicitly stated that the stroke was the dominant cause of death, Dr. Rizzoli's report clearly focused on the stroke. [6] Although his testimony uses different words than the expert report, it was a reasonable elaboration of the opinion disclosed in the report, that the amount of bleeding described seems out of proportion to that which would be expected on the basis of trauma alone. See Muldrow ex rel. Muldrow v. Re-Direct, Inc., 493 F.3d 160, 167 (D.C.Cir.2007) (explaining how Rule 26 permits an expert to supplement, explain and elaborate on material contained in his report); see also Thompson v. Doane Pet Care Co., 470 F.3d 1201, 1203 (6th Cir.2006) (same). We fail to see any abuse of discretion in the district court's determination that, based on the expert report, Gay reasonably could have anticipated Dr. Rizzoli's testimony and, therefore, could not have been unfairly surprised to warrant striking the challenged testimony. See Licciardi v. TIG Ins. Grp., 140 F.3d 357, 363-64 (1st Cir.1998) (excluding expert witness testimony when the expert has changed his opinion on an important aspect of the case).