Opinion ID: 1693662
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Need for Expert Opinion

Text: ¶ 44. The circuit court also believed that the Previant firm's failure to complete a thorough investigation of scientific and medical experts in the field of teratology was unreasonable. The Previant firm argues that by so finding, the circuit court erred as a matter of law because there is no per se requirement that an expert be retained prior to filing. We agree that an expert need not be retained prior to filing an action as a matter of law. However, we disagree that the circuit court's finding should be read so broadly. ¶ 45. We have discovered no federal or state decision which directly addresses whether as a matter of law, Rule 11 or a comparable state rule governing frivolous actions requires a party to have in place an expert opinion prior to commencing an action. In those few cases in which the question has been addressed even tangentially, the answers vary. For instance, in Simpson v. Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, Inc., 522 A.2d 880, 884-85 (D.C. 1987), the court found that under circumstances in which the plaintiff had almost three years from the time of an alleged incident to the time she filed suit in which to investigate the causes of an alleged accident, her failure to identify an expert who would testify on her behalf regarding the defendants' duty of care in interrogatories suggested that she had failed to ascertain a basis for her claim prior to filing. Id. at 884-85. The court believed that the plaintiff could not have reasonably believed that the defendants had breached an applicable standard of care without expert advice to that effect prior to filing. Id. at 885. ¶ 46. In Meyer v. Mulligan, 889 P.2d 509 (Wyoming 1995), the Wyoming court explained that an expert would not be needed prior to filing an action alleging legal malpractice where the attorney who files is himself an expert in the legal area. Id. at 518. However, it believed that before an attorney files a legal malpractice action where the underlying case of alleged malpractice involves a complex or specialized area of the law, with which [an attorney is] unfamiliar, that attorney should first consult with an expert in the complex or specialized legal arena about the standard of care. Id. The court did not discuss, however, whether the failure to contact an expert witness prior to filing would be a violation of its frivolous lawsuit statute, modeled after Rule 11, as a matter of law and without regard to the additional circumstances facing the attorney prior to filing. ¶ 47. Federal decisions further suggest that expert witnesses are not required prior to commencing an action. For instance, in Teck General Partnership v. Crown Central Petroleum Corp., 28 F.Supp.2d 989, 992 n.9 (E.D. Va. 1998), the court wrote that [i]t is arguable whether, in some instances, Rule 11, Fed.R.Civ.P., may require retention or consultation with an expert before certain allegations may be included in a complaint. And in RTC Mortgage Trust v. Fidelity National Title Insurance Co., 981 F.Supp. 334, 345 (D.N.J. 1997), the court explained that Rule 11 neither demands nor regulates consultation with an expert . . . . ¶ 48. As a body, these cases are inconclusive. While good practice may dictate that an expert be consulted prior to filing a claim upon which expert testimony will necessarily be required at trial, a per se rule that an expert opinion is always required cannot be squared with the objective standard by which an attorney's investigation is to be judged. The test for frivolousness should take into consideration all of the circumstances facing the party commencing an action at the time the party files, and at times those circumstances may be such that an expert witness is not needed prior to filing. ¶ 49. Here, though, the circuit court did not rule that the Previant firm needed an expert witness as a matter of law and without regard to the circumstances it faced. Instead, the circuit court quite thoroughly explained its decision as one requiring expert opinion precisely because in its view the Previant firm had no other objective evidence of causation. As the claim had no basis in fact, the court believed that the firm should have consulted an expert to establish that basis. ¶ 50. While it did give some consideration to the circumstances, we nonetheless conclude that the circuit court drew its conclusion that an expert needed to be contacted prior to filing by improperly relying upon hindsight and for failing to give appropriate consideration to the amount of time within which the Previant firm had to conduct an investigation prior to a substantial change in the law. ¶ 51. As we explained, the amount of time an attorney has to investigate a claim is one consideration that shapes the objective standard for determining whether an attorney's inquiry was reasonable. The amount of time reasonably necessary to investigate a claim is itself variable, dependent upon the complexity of the claim. Here, the attorneys could not be expected to have conducted as thorough an investigation as they would have had they had longer than six weeks in which to file prior to the change in the law of joint and several liability. See Smith, 960 F.2d at 447 (because the lawyers had only two months in which to investigate a civil Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit prior to the running of the statute of limitation, they could not be expected to conduct as complete an inquiry as they could have had [the plaintiff] consulted them earlier). [A]s the Supreme Court noted [in Cooter & Gell ], if a lawyer discovers that his client has a potential cause of action only a short time before the statute of limitations will expire, a more cursory inquiry will be tolerated than when he has ample time to investigate. Townsend v. Holman Consulting Corp., 929 F.2d 1358, 1364 (9th Cir. 1990)(citing Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 110 S.Ct. 2447, 2459 (1990)). ¶ 52. While the plaintiffs' claims were not jeopardized by an impending statute of limitations, the change in the law of joint and several liability was a real concern for the Previant firm and one which reasonably contributed to its decision to file earlier than it would have otherwise done. The circuit court summarily and in error rejected the firm's concern and found that the change in the law of liability did not excuse the firm's failure to make an appropriate investigation. ¶ 53. The circuit court noted that from the time the Previant firm admitted it knew that the law was going to change to the time it took effect, it had more than six weeks to make a meaningful investigation. The court then concluded that six weeks was plenty of time to investigate because, relying upon the testimony of JFI's expert Dr. Brent, a consultation with a qualified teratologist lasting more than four or five hours would have revealed that the causation theory was meritless. ¶ 54. The court erroneously exercised its discretion in reaching this conclusion. First, the Previant firm did not fail to make any investigation into causation. It did conduct a literature search and one of its associates engaged in an elimination theory of causation which included interviews with the plaintiffs' mothers and two fathers. While the court found this investigation to be inadequate as support for causation, the investigation itself was not found to be an unreasonable attempt to establish causation. Certainly, as the Previant firm considered the time within which it had to file prior to the change in the law, it could not know that its investigation would be as fruitless as it turned out to be. Further, the circuit court's finding that had the Previant firm contacted a teratologist, a five-hour conversation would have established that causation could not be proven is a conclusion made manifestly with the benefit of hindsight. It presumes that causation is impossible to prove (a decision which appears to be made on the merits of the action even though made through Dr. Brent's testimony at the sanctions hearing), that a reasonable attorney would know that under the circumstances then facing it that a teratologist needed to be contacted, and it ignores the evidence offered by the Previant firm at the sanctions hearing that an epidemiological study could possibly establish causation. [7] ¶ 55. Although a close case, upon considering the facts and circumstances facing the Previant firm when it commenced the action, and resolving all doubts about frivolousness in favor of the Previant firm, see Juneau County v. Courthouse Employees, 221 Wis. 2d 630, 640, 585 N.W.2d 587 (1998), we conclude that the Previant firm did not frivolously file this lawsuit. Given the information that it knew, coupled with the short amount of time in which it reasonably believed it needed to file the lawsuit, the Previant firm did not commence this action frivolously.