Opinion ID: 1652596
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: WITNESS IMMUNITY and RETAINED EXPERTS

Text: Does witness immunity bar a claim against a retained expert witness asserted by a party who in prior litigation hired that expert, which claim arises from the expert's allegedly deficient performance of his duties to provide litigation services, such as the formulation of opinions and recommendations, and to give testimony before or during trial? That question has become one of increasing importance given the rapid growth in the number of professionals and others hired to provide litigants with assistance in the preparation and presentation of their cases. There has been much scholarship on the issue, with the majority of commentators arguing against extending absolute witness immunity to retained or friendly experts. [15] Not surprisingly, there is a growing body of case law on the issue as well, again with the majority of courts finding that no policy interest is served by immunizing negligent litigation support professionals from malpractice and breach of contract liability under the rubric of witness immunity. [16] Dr. Marrogi asserts that retained experts should not be entitled to witness immunity from civil liability for their negligence in the formulation of their opinion. He contends, citing Goldstein v. Serio, supra , that witness immunity has not been extended to bar all claims simply because they arise out of conduct that occurred during judicial proceedings. Instead, he argues, witness immunity is an affirmative defense only to those claims that have as an element communication to third persons during the course of judicial proceedings. Because his claim focuses only on the formulation of defendant Howard's opinion, rather than the communication of that opinion to third persons, Dr. Marrogi contends witness immunity should not bar his suit against Howard alleging breach of contract and breach of professional duties. Defendant Howard argues that the policy behind witness immunity applies equally to the hired expert witness. The defendant asserts that the truth-finding function would be undermined if experts, with an eye toward their own liability, steadfastly refuse to acknowledge errors or modify their views in light of additional information. Defendant Howard contends that Louisiana courts have uniformly determined that expert witnesses may not be sued for damages arising out of their testimony, and that there should be no distinction between friendly experts and any other. Defendant Howard argues that those cases also involved a breach of a duty owed by the expert. [17] However, the reasoning in S.T.J. and Rogers v. Janzen for extending absolute judicial immunity to court-appointed professionals, i.e., those experts to whom the court has delegated quasi-judicial functions, does not easily translate to extending the privilege of witness immunity to a so-called friendly expert retained by a party. Similarly, the cases involving retaliation suits against an adverse expert do not address the issue of a retained expert's negligence toward his own client. We next consider two approaches to the issue presented. And for the reasons set forth below, we conclude that no overarching public purpose is served by applying witness immunity to shield a retained expert witness from a claim subsequently asserted by the party who hired him when the claim alleges deficient performance of his professional and contractual duties to provide litigation support services. One court that has applied the doctrine of witness immunity to preclude suits against a friendly expert witness is the Washington Supreme Court in Bruce v. Byrne-Stevens & Associates Engineers, Inc., 113 Wash.2d 123, 776 P.2d 666 (1989). There, the plaintiffs' land was damaged. At trial, they offered the testimony of their retained engineering expert, who estimated the cost of restoring the property at approximately $21,000. Although the plaintiffs prevailed, they later discovered that the engineer expert had underestimated the cost of restoration by about half. The plaintiffs thereafter sued their expert for negligence in preparing his analysis and testimony, arguing that, but for the expert's low estimate, they would have recovered the full cost of restoration from the original defendant. A plurality of the Washington Supreme Court found that absolute immunity precluded suit against the expert witness for his testimony in judicial proceedings and that such immunity attached to acts and communications that occur in connection with the preparation of that testimony. The court opined that, in the absence of immunity, two forms of indirect censorship would develop: (1) the imposition of liability would discourage anyone who is not a full-time professional expert witness from testifying, because one-time or infrequent experts might not carry the necessary insurance to cover the liability risk in testifying, and (2) the expert witness might shade or distort his testimony out of fear of subsequent liability, perhaps losing objectivity or adopting the most extreme position favorable to his client. Id. at 670. These latter tendencies, the court believed, would deprive the finder of fact of candid, objective, and undistorted evidence. The court concluded that the imposition of witness liability was not necessary to secure accurate information for the finder of fact, because expert witness reliability is adequately ensured by the witness's oath, the hazard of cross-examination, and the threat of a perjury prosecution. Id. at 670, 673. [18] While the Washington Supreme Court applied the privilege to a retained expert, the majority of the other courts that have addressed this issue have not applied the privilege of witness immunity to retained experts. See Note 16, supra. In a case factually similar to the instant case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that the doctrine of witness immunity does not extend to bar professional malpractice actions against professionals hired to perform services related to litigation. LLMD of Michigan, Inc. v. Jackson-Cross Co., 559 Pa. 297, 740 A.2d 186 (1999). There, the plaintiff had prosecuted a breach of contract claim against lenders who had allegedly failed to provide financing for the purchase and rehabilitation of an industrial facility. The plaintiff hired an accounting firm to assist it in calculating the lost profits as a result of the lenders' breach. The agreement between the plaintiff and the accounting firm contemplated that the latter would quantify the damages, prepare a signed report, and participate in pre-trial conferences, depositions, and trial. The accounting firm provided the plaintiff with a calculation of lost profits amounting to some $6 million, and the firm's principal testified at trial to that effect. However, on cross-examination, opposing counsel established that the calculation contained a mathematical error that completely undermined its veracity. The witness had not personally performed the calculation and thus could not explain the error's effect or recalculate the alleged lost profits. The testimony and calculation were stricken from the record because they were based on erroneous mathematical calculations. Without this expert testimony, the plaintiff was left with its own testimony and calculation of lost profits. The day after the expert's testimony was stricken, the plaintiff settled with the lenders for $750,000.00. Thereafter, the plaintiff sued the accounting firm, alleging that the firm had breached its agreement to furnish expert services by failing to deliver an accurate or workmanlike lost profits calculation and had failed to exercise the degree of care and skill ordinarily exercised by experts in the field of real estate counseling and computation of lost profits in real estate transactions. The district court granted summary judgment. On appeal, the intermediate appellate court affirmed on different grounds, concluding that the doctrine of witness immunity barred the plaintiffs action. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed, finding that the action was not barred by the doctrine of witness immunity. The court reviewed the doctrine, noting that, in the context of defamation actions, participants in judicial proceedings have an absolute privilege for the communications related to the proceedings. The court also recognized the policy basis for the doctrine, but noted that the privilege exists because the courts have other internal sanctions against defamatory statements, such as perjury or contempt proceedings. The court noted that the privilege furthers the two-fold policy of ensuring that the path to the truth is left as free and unobstructed as possible and of protecting the judicial process. The court did not believe that the same policy considerations were furthered by extending the privilege to professional negligence actions that are prosecuted by a former client against an expert witness who has been negligent in formulating his opinion. While cautioning that the substance of the expert's opinion testimony may not form the basis for a subsequent suit, the court concluded that the judicial process is enhanced by holding an expert witness to the degree of care, skill, and proficiency commonly exercised by members of his or her profession. [19] After reviewing the cases from the courts of our sister states, as well as the applicable policy considerations, we hold that claims in connection with a retained expert's alleged failure to provide competent litigation support services are not barred by the doctrine of witness immunity. The privilege of witness immunity in Louisiana has been applied in defamation and defamation-like cases, as well as retaliation cases against adverse witnesses, expert and otherwise. The policy underlying that rule is that witnesses must be permitted to speak freely and without fear of exposure to vexatious litigation where a search for the truth is before the factfinder. However, that laudable objective is not advanced by immunizing the incompetence of a party's retained expert witness simply because he or she provides professional services, including testimony, in relation to a judicial proceeding. Witness immunity itself is an exception to tort liability, and thus should be narrowly construed in light of our Civil Code's provision that [e]very act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it. La. Civ.Code art. 2315. Furthermore, immunity from tort liability is, generally, recognized only to promote an overarching public purpose. We agree that the finder of fact must be able to rely on candid, objective, and undistorted evidence. Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U.S. at 333, 103 S.Ct. at 1114. However, we do not believe that shielding a client's own professional witness from malpractice liability is necessary to ensure that frank and objective testimony is presented to the fact-finder. A party's retained expert witness, rather than a court-appointed expert, for example, contracts for monetary remuneration with a party to assist in preparing and presenting his case not only in the best light possible but also, surely, in a competent fashion. Thus, the retained expert's function is not only to assist the court or fact-finder in understanding complicated matters, but also to render competent assistance in supporting his client's action against the client's opponent. The Bruce court assumed that in the absence of immunity, the expert would be motivated not simply by frankness and objectivity, but by the fear of exposure to civil liability among other considerations. Properly viewed, however, the roles of hired gun and servant of the court are not necessarily incompatible. In reality, the expert retained for litigation is hired to present truthful and competent testimony that puts his client's position in the best possible light. The expert witness's oath, the heat of cross-examination, the threat of a perjury prosecution, and, not least, the expert's professional ethics code all serve to limit the feared excesses of an expert subject to malpractice liability. [20] Moreover, the absence of immunity will not only encourage the expert witness to exercise more care in formulating his or her opinion but also protect the litigant from the negligence of an incompetent professional. Given these considerations, witness immunity does not serve an overarching public purpose in barring a client's suit against his own hired professional who deficiently performs agreed upon litigation support services. The correctness of our view lies in the facts, alleged and established, in the instant case. In this case, defendant Howard, who had allegedly held himself out as an expert in the field of medical billing, got paid to review a set of medical reports and billing records, to make calculations based on this review, and, thereafter, to present his correct calculations and assumptions in court. Instead, the defendant made erroneous calculations and, when that fact was made known to him, he abandoned his client, rather than continue to assist him in the litigation, and kept the money that he was paid. Clearly then, Dr. Marrogi has made the allegation that the defendant was negligent, not in having a particular opinion, but in formulating his opinion, i.e., the defendant was negligent in performing professional services such as calculations upon which his expert opinion testimony would ultimately be based. That defendant Howard's erroneous calculations were, in this case, presented in an affidavit and in deposition testimony, rather than, say, a written report, does not change our view that an expert witness hired to perform litigation support services, but who performs those services in a negligent manner, cannot hide from civil liability to his client behind the shield of witness immunity. The benefit to the judicial system in the rule we announce today is a practical one: ridding the system of incompetent experts and ensuring that reliable opinion testimony is presented to the fact-finder. The Washington Supreme Court in Bruce speculated that the lack of immunity will result in less truthful expert testimony. [21] With no sanction for incompetent preparation, however, an expert witness is free to prepare and testify without regard to the accuracy of his data or opinion. We do not see how the freedom to testify negligently will result in more truthful expert testimony. Without some overarching purpose, it would be illogical, if not unconscionable, to shield a professional, who is otherwise held to the standards and duties of his or her profession, from liability for his or her malpractice simply because a party to a judicial proceeding has engaged that professional to provide services in relation to the judicial proceeding and that professional testifies by affidavit or deposition. In this case, cross-examination during the deposition succeeded in revealing excesses or inaccuracies in defendant Howard's opinion testimony. The truth-finding function of the judicial system was thus protected. Though defendant Howard contends he is effectively being punished for telling the truth, i.e., confessing to his errors, we see no valid reason why the judicial system should immunize him from liability to his client for his alleged negligence in making calculations and formulating his opinion. [22] Finally, we see no merit to the argument that witness immunity should apply to expert witnesses because it will otherwise be difficult for the expert's client to prove causation and damages in a suit brought by the client against the expert. Simply because the plaintiff client may have a heavy burden to carry in proving his case does not mean that we should immunize the defendant retained expert from civil liability for his professional negligence or breach of contract. We therefore answer the question certified to us in the negative: Witness immunity or privilege in Louisiana does not bar a claim against a retained expert witness asserted by a party who in prior litigation retained the expert, which claim arises from the expert's allegedly negligent performance of his agreed upon duties to provide litigation support services.