Opinion ID: 1516176
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dr. Bridges's expert medical testimony.

Text: It is with the above described Superior Court practice in mind that we address the ruling limiting Dr. Bridges's expert testimony. Here, the trial judge's Superior Court Civil Rule 16(b) pretrial scheduling order required Sammons to identify expert witnesses on or before April 15, 2005. [22] On April 15, 2005, Sammons disclosed Dr. Bridges as an expert witness who would offer an opinion regarding sickle cell patients' life expectancies. Sammons's expert witness discovery response did not disclose that Dr. Bridges would be offered for an opinion on causation or a failure to diagnose sepsis. [23] At Dr. Bridges's discovery deposition on August 25, 2005, Sammons's counsel asked him questions relating to causation and failure to diagnose sepsis over objections from counsel for Dr. Sobel and Family Practice. DFES counsel, however, did not attend the deposition. DFES's counsel contends that he saw no reason to attend when Sammons's discovery response purported to offer Dr. Bridges's expert testimony solely to establish Gail's sickle cell life expectancy. Although Sammons argues that the trial judge should have permitted her to supplement expert disclosures under Superior Court Civil Rule 26(e) and that she reserved the right to supplement, amend, or modify her expert disclosures in her expert identification discovery response, [24] Sammons, in fact, did not supplement her expert disclosure or submit Dr. Bridges's proffered expanded opinion to the court or to opposing counsel before participating in Dr. Bridges's pretrial deposition. During oral argument, we specifically asked Sammons's counsel whether he had made any effort to supplement the expert discovery response and counsel stated that he had not. The trial judge granted Family Practice and Dr. Sobel's motion to restrict the scope of Dr. Bridges's testimony reasoning that it would disrupt the orderly process of the court to allow parties to disclose expert opinions for the first time during trial depositions. [25] The trial judge stated: With respect to causation, I will prohibit Dr. Bridges from testifying about causation because no opinion about causation was disclosed at all by Dr. Bridges by the time of plaintiff's expert disclosures, which I believe the deadline was April 15, 2005. And it's just not sufficient that Dr. Bridges did testify about causation at his deposition on August 25 and it is also to me not significant that perhaps defendant's counsel explored some causation issues at deposition testimony. There was a trial scheduling order and it is just contrary to the trial scheduling order in this case as well as the practice in this Court to allow an opinion to be disclosed for the first time at a deposition that occurs after the deadline has passed for disclosure of expert opinions . . . In this case it would just wreak havoc on the orderly development of expert's opinions if an opinion didn't have to be disclosed by the deadline and could be broached for the first time at a discovery deposition following that because, among other things, the parties challenging the expert need to know before they attend the deposition what the opinions are going to be. So for all of those reasons, the Court will bar Dr. Bridges from testifying regarding causation. The purpose of the Rule 16 scheduling order and discovery deadlines are to improve the efficiency of trials. The expert identification deadline assists the parties in conducting useful discovery of expert's opinions. Pursuant to Rule 26, the expert disclosure statements should identify the expert's opinions and the basis for those opinions so that the opposing party can properly prepare for depositions and trial. Here, Sammons did not properly and timely disclose Dr. Bridges's opinion regarding causation and failure to diagnose sepsis before the expert disclosure date mandated by the trial judge's scheduling order. Contrary to Sammons's assertion, she did not cure the discovery deficiency simply by disclosing Dr. Bridges's opinion regarding a failure to diagnose sepsis and causation during a deposition scheduled by another party for discovery purposes. Further, Sammons's counsel neither moved to amend the Rule 16 scheduling order upon a showing of good cause, supplemented their original expert disclosure to expand Dr. Bridges's opinion nor contacted DFES counsel to notify him of Dr. Bridges's expanded opinion before the scheduled deposition. Without notice of the proposed expanded expert opinion to be proffered, DFES was entitled to rely on Sammons's disclosure. DFES could fairly assume it to be an accurate statement of the expert's anticipated opinion at his deposition as well as later at trial. DFES relied on Sammons's expert disclosure statement, and did not attend the deposition. Therefore, the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he granted Family Practice and Dr. Sobel's motion to restrict Dr. Bridges's trial testimony.