Opinion ID: 2315015
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The policies governing the use of testimony of an adverse party's expert.

Text: A similar course of legal reasoning marks the gradual development of the use of the opinion evidence of an adversary's expert. Despite Wigmore's oft-repeated maxim that the public has a right to every man's evidence (and today we would say as well, every woman's evidence), 8 Wigmore on Evidence § 2192 (McNaughton rev. 1961), some courts have qualified that general rule. Some jurisdictions simply will not compel an expert whom an adversary had initially consulted to appear as a witness. Lori J. Henkel, Annotation, Experts  Compelled Testimony, 66 A.L.R. 4th 213, 225-40 (1988). Other courts apply the rule favoring testimonial compulsion to all experts, including doctors, appraisers, and others. Id. at 223-24. Thus, in Kaufman v. Edelstein, 539 F. 2d 811 (2d Cir.1976), in which the government subpoenaed renowned computer-system consultants to express their expert opinions concerning market monopoly of electronic data processing, the Court of Appeals stated that no justification exists for a rule that would wholly exempt experts from placing before a tribunal factual knowledge relating to the case in hand   . Id. at 821. Such rulings create the anomaly that although a party cannot depose an adversary's non-testifying expert, a court can compel the witness to testify at trial. Condemnation cases present the most familiar context in which parties have sought to obtain the opinion of an adversary's expert. There, courts motivated by a perception of injustice, have allowed or even compelled admission of the appraisal opinion that property has a value different from that asserted in the proceedings. See Town of Thomaston v. Ives, 239 A. 2d 515 (Conn. 1968); State v. Steinkraus, 76 N.M. 617, 417 P. 2d 431 (1966). Obviously, there is a good deal of impracticality about all of this. As a canny Georgia judge has noted, if an expert is required to testify for the usual witness fee of $10.00 a day, you are likely to get about $10.00 worth of testimony. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Glaccum, 186 Ga. App. 148, 366 S.E. 2d 772, 774 (1988). Still, on occasion a party gains access to the adversary's expert reports. In Fenlon v. Thayer, 127 N.H. 702, 506 A. 2d 319 (1986), a medical malpractice case, the court concluded that not to permit an injured plaintiff to subpoena a doctor who had concluded that there was evidence of malpractice in the treatment of the plaintiff was prejudicial error. The defendant had originally consulted this doctor as a potential expert witness. The New Hampshire court relied on the following rather untidy formulation from an A.L.R. annotation: An important consideration in determining whether one employed as an expert by one party may or should be required to testify as such at the instance of the adverse party is whether, under the particular circumstances, it is fair to do so. Annotation, Compelling Expert to Testify, 77 A.L.R. 2d 1182, 1192 (1961) (citing Ramacorti v. Boston Redevelopment Auth., 341 Mass. 377, 170 N.E. 2d 323 (1960)). Thus, in Granger v. Wisner, 134 Ariz. 377, 656 P. 2d 1238 (1982), a case very similar to this one, the Arizona Supreme Court concluded that an expert witness whom the plaintiff's attorney had consulted could testify on behalf of the defendant that in the expert's opinion the defendant had not committed malpractice. That court emphasized that counsel had not questioned the witness about, and the witness had not testified to, any confidential communications with the plaintiff or her previous counsel. The expert based his testimony solely on his education, training, experience, and a review of the records. Id. at 1241. Allowing expert testimony that does not divulge confidential information promotes a primary concern of the courts, namely, to elicit truth essential to correct adjudication. Sachs v. Aluminum Co. of Am., 167 F. 2d 570 (6th Cir.1948). Although New Jersey is in the minority of jurisdictions in not allowing the compulsion of expert opinion testimony, see Genovese v. New Jersey Transit Rail Operations, 234 N.J. Super. 375, 560 A. 2d 1272 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 118 N.J. 195, 570 A. 2d 960 (1989), our courts have seldom confronted the issue of whether an adversarial expert may be permitted to testify against the party that originally retained the expert. Our decisional law addressing that issue is not uniform. When the expert is a treating physician, our trial courts are divided. In Piller v. Kovarsky, 194 N.J. Super. 392, 476 A. 2d 1279 (Law Div. 1984), the court concluded that the physician-patient relationship would preclude a physician from testifying against his patient as a liability expert, at least in a medical malpractice action involving the very condition for which the physician has treated the patient. Id. at 399, 476 A. 2d 1279. The court reasoned that such testimony could not help but have a detrimental effect on the quality of the [physician-patient] relationship, and who can say that this would not thereby affect the well-being of the patient. Id. at 398, 476 A. 2d 1279. Similarly, in Serrano v. Levitsky, 215 N.J. Super. 454, 521 A. 2d 1377 (Law Div. 1986), the court refused to allow defendant to call plaintiff's primary treating physician or cross-examine him on a portion of his report in which he had gratuitously included his opinion that defendant-doctor had not been negligent. In supplying the report to defendant, plaintiff had emphasized that he was not adopting the doctor's opinion on the liability aspect of the case. The court reasoned that Rule 4:10-2(d)(3) allows an opposing party to discover the opinion of a non-testifying expert only on a showing of exceptional circumstances. Because the defendant could not make that showing, the court precluded the testimony. Id. at 459, 521 A. 2d 1377. But in Kurdek v. West Orange Board of Education, 222 N.J. Super. 218, 536 A. 2d 332 (Law Div. 1987), the court allowed the defendant to call the plaintiff's treating physician as its witness on the issue of permanency of injury, reasoning that a trial is essentially a search for the truth. Id. at 226, 536 A. 2d 332. The court informed the witness that he had no obligation to serve as an expert for the defendant, but the doctor was willing to do so. Id. at 221, 536 A. 2d 332. The trial court in Cogdell v. Brown, 220 N.J. Super. 330, 531 A. 2d 1379 (Law Div. 1987), also faced an unusual factual situation. That court allowed an examining physician, who after being consulted by the defendant, had submitted a report on the defendant's behalf, to testify as the plaintiff's witness. The plaintiff's attorney had informed opposing counsel well in advance of trial that he intended to use the witness. Id. at 333, 531 A. 2d 1379. Immediately before jury selection, newly-assigned defense counsel moved to prevent the doctor's testimony. The court denied the motion, reasoning that under those unusual circumstances, excluding the testimony would deprive the plaintiff of a fair trial. Ibid. Cases adopting the search-for-truth rationale do not, however, explain the anomaly that under our Rules of discovery, absent exceptional circumstances the opinion evidence of an expert not expected to testify at trial cannot be discovered, much less admitted as evidence. Genovese, supra, 234 N.J. Super. 375, 560 A. 2d 1272, offers perhaps the most useful formulation of an organizing principle. In that case, the plaintiff sought to use the videotaped deposition testimony of an expert whom the defendant did not intend to call as a witness. The Appellate Division refused to permit its use, despite the fact that the opinion was not under compulsion. The court ruled that an expert's deposition taken pursuant to Rule 4:14-9(e) should not be substantively useable by an adversary over objection. Id. at 381, 560 A. 2d 1272. The Genovese court observed that a videotaped deposition of a treating physician or expert witness under Rule 4:14-9(e), unlike a de bene esse deposition (one that is taken provisionally for use if the witness is unavailable at the time of trial, see Rule 4:11-3), may be used at trial in lieu of testimony whether or not the witness is available to testify. Still, the court held that the efficient administration of trials and the fair balance of the parties' interests would not be advanced by permitting the opposing party to use such testimony. It reasoned that Rule 4:14-9(e) is a valuable innovation whose use should be encouraged. It is cheaper for litigants, more convenient for experts, and more efficient for the court to permit a party to present a videotaped deposition if the party elects to do so. It would discourage the use of the device if an expert's deposition could be used substantively by the other side. [ Ibid. ] In short, if the search-for-truth rationale trumped all other policies of law, we would have provided for the discovery of all experts' reports without requiring a showing of exceptional circumstances under Rule 4:10-2(d)(3).