Court Opinion

ID: 9666929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:30:20.706449+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:33.580035
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. I could agree with the majority if this were a discovery dispute between litigants. But petitioner is not a party and is without the recourse otherwise available, a circumstance the majority ignores. Consequently he is confronted with the distasteful prospect of facing contempt charges for refusing to answer questions involving his opinions as a physician. That, I believe, provides the extraordinary circumstances appropriate to prohibition or certiorari. Respondent insists he does not propose to obtain expert testimony from Dr. Lupo. “The crux of the case,” he tells us, is that Dr. Lupo “is not being forced to provide expert testimony against his will. . . . He is merely another person who is being deposed because he has knowledge concerning matters involved in the case. [Respondent] is merely seeking to discover what that knowledge is.” Respondent’s brief, page 14. That assurance is reenforced elsewhere: [Respondent] will concede that it would be error for Judge Lineberger to compel Dr. Lupo to testify as an expert against his will at trial. However, Judge Lineberger’s order does not do this. It does not require Dr. Lupo to divulge any specialized knowledge to assist the trier of fact. A.R.E. 702. All it requires is that Dr. Lupo submit to a discovery deposition as an ordinary witness and answer questions based on his first-hand knowledge, experience and past statements. [Emphasis in original.] Id. at 21. Yet it is all too apparent from oral argument and respondent’s brief that the “knowledge” respondent hopes to discover is essentially Dr. Lupo’s professional judgment and opinion as to the appropriate standard of care for urologists in the community, whether certain medical texts are “learned treatises” in their field, and opinions he may have formed concerning the deceased patient not protected by the scope of peer review. But these are patently areas of expert testimony and not obtainable by compulsion. Ark. R. Evid. 706. Nor can I see anything to be gained by overruling Curtis v. Partain, 272 Ark. 400, 614 S.W.2d 671 (1981). That decision, issued unanimously, was expressly for the guidance of the trial bench when privileged information is sought by discovery. We have made it clear the case is not to be read broadly for the issuánce of writs of prohibition in discovery disputes. Ridenhower v. Erwin, 303 Ark. 647, 799 S.W.2d 535 (1990). And we have said as to prohibition that Curtis v. Partain is “limited to its facts.” Forrest City Machine Works, Inc. v. Erwin, 304 Ark. 321, 802 S.W.2d 140 (1991). Why not leave it at that. There are principles of law announced in that opinion “of general interest to all trial courts” that I believe are sound today. To overrule Partain needlessly undermines those pronouncements.