Opinion ID: 1102954
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: did the trial court err in allowing jra's expert to refer to the cohen appraisal during his rebuttal testimony?

Text: As its case on rebuttal, JRA again called T.E. Tate, who had already testified in JRA's case-in-chief. Early in his testimony on direct examination, the following exchange took place: Q. All right, sir. In the course of your preparation of your opinions and testimony in this case and your appraisal, did you review and consider an appraisal report and deposition prepared by Mr. Richard Cohen who is employed by Mr. Morley and Mrs. Laurence as one of their appraisers in this case? BY MS. MCLEOD: Objection, your Honor. Can we approach the bench? BY THE COURT: Yes. (BENCH CONFERENCE) [unrecorded by the court reporter]. BY THE COURT: We're going to take about a ten minute recess. After the recess, the question was repeated in substance and the owners' attorney again objected, stating as her basis the fact that it would have been physically impossible for Tate to have relied on Cohen's January, 1990, report in preparing his appraisal made in 1988 and updated in 1989. The court allowed the testimony, stating that, [t]he Court spent about ten minutes earlier on this matter, and under Rule 703 we're going to allow him to testify, and you have the right to cross examine him. Tate went on to testify that Cohen stated in his appraisal that the office market was very over-built and weak, rental rates for office space were weak, the hotel market was weak, the retail market was weak, no comparable sales to the King Edward existed in Jackson, and that Cohen valued the land, if it were vacant, at $20 per square foot, the identical figure Tate used in his appraisal. The owners contend that the entire line of questioning was improper rebuttal and a charade to allow into evidence the hearsay statements of Cohen. JRA contends that the hearsay statements were properly admitted under Rule 703 of the Mississippi Rules of Evidence to show the basis of the testimony given by Tate. Rule 703 states: The facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to him at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible in evidence. Rule 703 does not address whether the information relied on by the expert is admissible just by virtue of his reliance on it. The parties do not cite, and we cannot find any Mississippi case directly on point. However, a common sense analysis of this question compels us to find admission of these statements was error. The purpose of the line of questioning was not to show the basis of Tate's opinion of value, since Tate had already given detailed testimony on JRA's case-in-chief. A fair review of the record indicates that the sole purpose of this line of questioning was to relate to the jury that an appraiser hired by the owners had found the market for the possible uses of the King Edward to be weak. These statements testified to by Tate were obviously hearsay and just as obviously not offered to explain the basis for Tate's opinion, despite the allegation to the contrary, but to bolster Tate's earlier testimony and to impeach the owners' other expert witnesses. U.S. v. Grey Bear, 883 F.2d 1382 (8th Cir.1989), cited by the owners, is most helpful on this point. There, the court found that while a witness may rely on information which is inadmissible in evidence, that does not give the witness the right to circumvent the rules of hearsay by giving statements which corroborate his view. Id. at 1392-93. Marsee v. U.S. Tobacco Co., 866 F.2d 319 (10th Cir.1989), is in a similar vein. There, the court found it proper to refuse to allow a doctor to testify as to what other doctors had told him about similar medical cases, which statements he relied on in forming his opinion. The court found that while his opinion based in part on the statements was admissible, the statements themselves were still inadmissible hearsay. The cases cited by JRA in support of admissibility are unpersuasive. None of them directly addresses the independent admissibility of the hearsay statements and one, American Fire Ins. Co. v. Falzone, 644 F.2d 65 (1st Cir.1981), explicitly states that while the jury may hear statements going to the basis of the expert's opinion, the jury should be instructed that the hearsay statements are to be considered for only that purpose and not for the truth of the statement. The rule expressed in Marsee is particularly applicable to this case, especially in view of our discussion above and conclusion that, although a party may call the other party's appraiser, that party may not tell the jury that the appraiser was hired by his opponent. To do so invites an unfairly prejudicial inference that the appraiser was being held from the jury. The use of Cohen's report without the benefit of cross-examination, when combined with the error in allowing JRA's counsel to mention the fact that the owners hired Cohen constitutes prejudicial error. Finally, the manner in which the trial court allowed the examination to proceed compels a holding that the court erred in even allowing Tate to be called as a rebuttal witness. The party upon whom the affirmative of an issue devolves is bound to give his evidence in support of the issue in the first instance, and will not be permitted to hold back part of his evidence and offer it in rebuttal. Crawford v. City of Meridian, 186 So.2d 250, 253 (Miss. 1966). The trial court's tacit approval of this manner of rebuttal testimony clearly amounts to an abuse of discretion, for which we also reverse. Tate obviously could not have relied on Cohen's appraisal in forming his opinion of value, reached long before Cohen had ever heard of the King Edward. Even if he had relied on Cohen's appraisal in preparing for his testimony, that fact could have been brought out in JRA's case-in-chief as support for his own valuation conclusion, not in rebuttal as a back-door attack on the owners' case.