Opinion ID: 2194743
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ms. Donaldson's Use of Dr. Bechamp's Testimony as Prima Facie Evidence

Text: Because the trial court acted within its discretion in denying Dr. Townsend's Rule 50 motion, we must next address his contention that Ms. Donaldson was not entitled to the testimony of the Hospital's expert to establish her prima facie case. We disagree. As Wigmore has stated, [T]he sufficiency of evidence which will defeat [a motion for judgment as a matter of law] may be found in the opponent's own evidence. . . . 9 WIGMORE ON EVIDENCE § 2495 (1981) (emphasis in original). Indeed, we have previously held that an opponent's experts can be used to defeat summary judgment. In Abbey v. Jackson, 483 A.2d 330, 331 (D.C.1984), a medical malpractice action, the trial court had granted summary judgment for the defendant on the grounds that the plaintiff had named no experts of her own, but had merely cross-designated the defendant's experts. We reversed the grant of summary judgment, holding that this cross-designation was sufficient to send the matter to trial. It would be unreasonable to permit a plaintiff to rely on an opposing party's expert witnesses to defeat summary judgement and then prohibit the plaintiff from using those experts at trial. We have, on other occasions, affirmed a grant of summary judgment where a plaintiff failed to designate its own expert, but those cases involved fact patterns that led the trial court to conclude that there was no basis to believe that the defendant's experts would in fact be helpful to the plaintiff at trial. In Berkow v. Lucy Webb Hayes Nat. Training School for Deaconesses, 841 A.2d 776, 780 (D.C.2004), for example, we upheld a grant of summary judgment despite the appellant's claim that he could have provided adequate standard of care testimony through the defendants' experts. We found this argument unpersuasive because he had never notified the defendants that he intended to do so . . . and, in any event, there is no record basis . . . for believing that [he] could have used defense witnesses to establish the standard of care and defendants' departure from it. Id. Similarly, in Eibl v. Kogan, 494 A.2d 640 (D.C.1985) (per curiam), we upheld a grant of summary judgment, concluding that this is not a case in which a plaintiff might reasonably be expected to elicit, on cross-examination, testimony from which a jury might glean support for his contention. Id. at 643 n. 2. The situation here is distinguishable from those in Berkow and Eibl. There is no question that Ms. Donaldson can elicit helpful expert testimony from Dr. Bechamp. She has already done so. Thus, the fact that the testimony came in through an expert for the Hospital is not a bar to its use by Ms. Donaldson. Moreover, as we noted above, Dr. Townsend recognized before trial that he and the Hospital had conflicting theories of the case. This, coupled with Ms. Donaldson's cross-designation of Dr. Bechamp and her attempt to subpoena him during her case in chief should have put him on notice that such testimony could be forthcoming. Thus, we hold that the testimony of Dr. Bechamp could be utilized by Ms. Donaldson in establishing her prima facie case. [23]