Court Opinion

ID: 9856561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:50:31.293863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:22.123086
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Chief Justice,
concurring specially:
The primary issue in this case is whether or not the district court erred in permitting an expert witness to run new or additional tests just before trial, and then to use those results to bolster or to alter his opinion. This issue could have been resolved by a Rule 16 pretrial order which set a deadline for any new testing or experiments without prior approval of the court.
As both the majority and dissenting opinions point out, Dr. Blotter in his deposition alluded to the fact that he might do some additional testing. Plaintiffs’ counsel, in his statement to the court, recognized that, stating, “We continued his deposition because he had indicated at this deposition, and Mr. Farley had, that he might want to do something more.” Plaintiff argues that,, in the event that he did do something more, the defendant had a duty under Rule *21326(e)(4) to “seasonably” supplement its discovery responses.
The drafters of Rule 26(e)(4) recognized that the term “seasonably” was somewhat imprecise.
The committee did have some misgivings with the requirement that the party has a duty to ‘seasonably’ supplement his responses in that this leaves a great deal of discretion to the trial court in determining whether the supplementation was done within the time required. However, it appeared that no better term could be devised____
Comment to I.R.C.P. 26(e).
In Radmer v. Ford Motor Co., 120 Idaho 86, 813 P.2d 897 (1991), this Court, in analyzing the Rule 26(e)(4) requirement, quoted from Friedenthal, Discovery and Use of an Adverse Party’s Expert Information, 14 Stan.L.Rev. 455, 485 (1962), that it is “fundamental that opportunity be had for full cross-examination____” Radmer, 120 Idaho at 89, 813 P.2d at 900 (emphasis added). Thus, an important inquiry in determining whether a response was given “seasonably” is: was the opposing party given an opportunity for full cross examination? If “yes,” then there probably would be no abuse of discretion in admitting the testimony.
In his original testing, Dr. Blotter had tested a similar nail gun to evaluate the plaintiffs’ claim that a nail was able to get into a position where it could come out of the back of the raceway on the nail gun with sufficient velocity to reach the plaintiff and injure his eye. The later testing by Blotter was to determine the force required by the nailer in order to drive a nail into wood. After doing the additional tests, Dr. Blotter’s new opinion was, as noted in the dissenting opinion, that the most likely scenario for the accident was that the operator of the nail gun simply missed the board with the nail, and it hit the plaintiff in the eye, a rather non-technical and somewhat obvious conclusion. Had the additional testing and Dr. Blotter’s new opinion been a very technical analysis and conclusion as to how the accident occurred, the trial court, or this Court on appeal, may well have concluded that the plaintiffs had been deprived of the opportunity for full cross examination. Cf Radmer, supra. The trial judge, who presided over the entire proceeding including all of the pretrial discovery disputes that occurred between the parties, concluded that the plaintiff was not prejudiced by the late disclosure, and that the defense expert ought to be permitted to use the additional testing in arriving at his opinion.
The issue which we must resolve is whether or not the trial court abused its discretion in permitting the expert Dr. Blotter to consider his last minute force tests and then render an opinion that the most likely cause of the accident was that the operator simply missed the board with the nail. Unless we are convinced that the trial court erred in the exercise of its discretion, we should affirm. While it is a close question, the facts of this case are sufficiently distinguishable from Radmer v. Ford Motor Co., 120 Idaho 86, 813 P.2d 897 (1991), to justify not overturning the trial court’s exercise of discretion in this case.