Court Opinion

ID: 9540911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:20:45.994307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:01:37.405482
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
1. This case was filed in March 1982 nearly two years after the fatal collision, and was tried almost two years later after extensive discovery and communications between the parties and several pretrial conferences with the court. During this laborious process, in May 1983, defendants served interrogatories asking for, among other things, the name, address, profession, and substance of testimony and opinion of each expert witness. The request called attention to the *186continuing duty to supply information and expressly referred to the expert witness in this regard. Plaintiffs gave the requested information, naming a Dr. Craig Depken. Although the answer was not formally amended, plaintiffs apparently did inform defendants that they would instead call Dr. David Brown, a private expert who in fact testified.
Plaintiffs learned of Trooper Crawford the day before the trial was to begin, and they advised the court and defendants, as soon as court commenced the next morning, that they expected to call him and would therefore make him available that afternoon or over the weekend for defendants to depose or simply query.
At the last of several pretrial conferences, a week or so prior to trial, the court instructed plaintiffs’ counsel to prepare a pretrial order. Although attempts at arriving at an agreed order were made by counsel, none was submitted to the court. So the court, sua sponte, issued a pretrial order on February 22, the day the jury was selected, and the same day, as it turned out, that plaintiffs discovered and interviewed Crawford. The short pretrial order provided in part that “no witnesses will be called by either side unless their names and addresses have previously been furnished to the other side.” The order was served on plaintiffs’ counsel the next morning, just before or when the proceedings resumed and just before the announcement about Crawford.
Local rules provided a consolidated pretrial order form, which calls for each party’s list of witnesses and whether they will or may be present at trial. It also provides that “the foregoing need not include witnesses to be used only for impeachment.” As stated, that particular type order never materialized.
The local rules further provide that the court shall issue an order after the pretrial conference reflecting its results and that the order controls the subsequent course of the action, but that the court may amend the order at any time on motion or on the court’s initiative, for good and sufficient cause and to prevent manifest injustice. The local rules were not precisely followed, for they provide that no case (with an exception not relevant here) is to be placed on the trial calendar without a pretrial order.
Crawford had been brought to the attention of plaintiffs’ counsel by their witness Durrence, the accident investigation officer. Crawford was a member of the Georgia State Patrol and was experienced in drawing conclusions about the cause of collisions based on the techniques of accident reconstruction. Durrence had discovered that Crawford was in town at the district attorney’s office, and on the instruction of plaintiffs’ counsel called Crawford to come to counsel’s office, which he did. Finding his opinion to be contrary to that expected from defendants’ expert witness, and more in line with their *187own private expert witness’, plaintiffs brought him to court to testify. Plaintiffs’ counsel stated when asked by the court, that he knew of Crawford’s being “in the accident reconstruction business” but had never talked to him about this case, presumably because they already had private expert opinion.
Crawford’s testimony, being objected to by defendants both before and after they interviewed him, was disallowed by the court on the grounds that it was cumulative of Brown’s testimony and that plaintiffs were bound by the pretrial order, mentioning that plaintiffs had two years to prepare their case and would not be permitted to call him in the case-in-chief.1
When counsel offered Crawford in rebuttal to impeach defendants’ expert’s opinion, the court heard Crawford’s proposed testimony outside the presence of the jury. Defense counsel acknowledged that rebuttal witnesses did not have to be divulged, either in response to interrogatories or pursuant to the terms of the pretrial order entered in this case.
Crawford’s testimony indicated that he was first called into the case the day before, and that reviewing all the evidence, he was of the opinion that the Lee rig was located one to two feet into the northbound lane when struck by the car.
Defendants argued that this was not rebuttal testimony but rather was cumulative of Brown’s, and that counsel should have located an additional expert earlier if he wanted one, rather than bring him to defendants’ surprise as the trial was to commence. The court refused to allow Crawford’s testimony, on the grounds that it was cumulative and not rebuttal, but that Brown could be recalled to rebut what defendants’ expert had said. Brown, however, had returned to Atlanta.
The court further stated that if the witness had been discovered “in a reasonable time in advance of trial,” he would have allowed it but chose to abide by the terms of the pretrial order. The court had been persuaded that the testimony was not rebuttal, which would have made it not subject to the pretrial order’s mandate.
In my opinion, the proffered testimony was proper rebuttal testimony, for it challenged the correctness of defendant’s expert opinion on the location of the struck rig, which fact was crucial to the determination of the ultimate issue, i.e., the cause of the collision. The Lee rig’s placement when struck was one of the most hotly controverted facts in the case, if not the most controversial. Disinterested, objective testimony was obviously important, as the only other parties who *188could testify where the rig was were the two defendant drivers. Plaintiffs, who had the burden of proof, sought to counter the opinion of defendants’ expert by producing a third expert so that the evidence would not just be one expert’s opinion versus another expert’s opinion, a situation which might too easily be viewed as leaving the scales in balance. It is common, for example, to attach greater significance to medical opinion regarding the need for certain treatment when a “second opinion” corroborates it, especially in the face of a contrary opinion. Second, and indeed third, opinions are an inherent aspect of appellate judicial decision-making, partially for the very same reason, to give added weight to their correctness by demonstrating that three impartial minds have reached the same conclusion. Thus to say that one expert’s opinion should not be permitted because it is “cumulative” of another expert’s opinion misses the value of the factor of corroboration, especially where the opponent’s expert has testified otherwise. To simply call Brown back in rebuttal to say Elliott was wrong would be circuitous, as Brown’s position had already been given to the jury.
Plaintiffs were entitled to “the last word” by way of rebuttal, since they had the burden of proof. The calling of a different expert witness in rebuttal should not have been prohibited by the pretrial order of which counsel was unaware when he procured the new witness.
2. The investigating trooper’s testimony regarding his opinion that the driver had fallen asleep or had suffered the hypnotic night driving syndrome was purely speculative, as he in fact admitted. He was not even very familiar with the latter phenomenon. As he stated, that this was the cause was his own idea and he had no evidence to support it, and either one of these theories, as well as others, was “possible.” He expressed a great deal of equivocation and finally said, “I don’t have no way of knowing. Like I said, I don’t have any evidence to say one way or another because I don’t know what he was doing.”
Such testimony is of no probative value because of insufficient foundation, and yet it directly addressed the ultimate issue in the case, i.e., what was the cause of the collision. The jury should not have been permitted to base a finding that the collision was caused by the driver’s falling asleep or succumbing to a mind-affecting “syndrome,” on this testimony of speculation and surmise.

 Counsel for defendants volunteered, however, that “[counsel for plaintiffs] has worked this case diligently and hard.”