Court Opinion

ID: 9615693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:39:47.147142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:32.675018
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
Because the majority has returned Georgia trial practice to the pre-Civil Practice Act days of trial by ambush by requiring parties to disclose very few of their trial exhibits in the pretrial order, I dissent. Instead, I would hold that, if a trial court finds that a party should *823have reasonably anticipated tendering at trial a document that was omitted from the pretrial order, then it has the discretion to exclude that document from the trial, unless doing so would result in a manifest injustice.
1. Pretrial orders are “intended to limit the claims, contentions, defenses, and evidence that will be submitted to the jury.”1 With that indisputable policy in mind, the most sensible reading of Uniform Superior Court Rule 7.2 (14) is that pretrial orders must list all exhibits that the parties reasonably anticipate “will be tendered” at trial. Requiring disclosure of all documents that a party reasonably anticipates using at trial aids the jury in its search for the truth because both parties are better able to develop all relevant evidence and present it for the jury’s consideration.2 Allowing parties to withhold documents hinders a full and thorough examination of the truth because parties will be encouraged to hide evidence until they can spring it on their unsuspecting opponent, thereby leaving the jury with only one side’s view of events.
On the first day of trial in this case, Ballard sought to introduce a certified copy of Meyers’s amended complaint in a different lawsuit, which Ballard had obtained a month earlier. As shown by his actions, Ballard anticipated that he would need this document at trial, and he therefore should have listed it on the pretrial order, either originally or through an amendment. Accordingly, the trial court had the discretion to exclude the document, unless exclusion would have caused manifest injustice.3
2. To decide whether exclusion of a document would be manifestly unjust, I would require trial courts to weigh the following four factors: (1) the offering party’s intent in failing to list the document, (2) prejudice to the non-offering party, (3) ability to cure the prejudice, and (4) the court’s orderly and efficient trial of the case as well as its other cases. This test is based on the criteria that several federal courts of appeals4 and the Georgia Court of Appeals5 have used in similar circumstances.
Applying this four-factor test in this case, I would hold that the *824trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the complaint from evidence.6 First, Ballard intentionally withheld from disclosure in the pretrial order a document in his possession that he should have reasonably anticipated he would introduce at trial. Intentionally withholding a document from disclosure in the pretrial order should weigh heavily against that party’s ability to use it at trial.7
Second, permitting Ballard to use the complaint at trial would have unfairly prejudiced Meyers. The complaint had not previously appeared in the litigation between Meyers and Ballard, and it involved a different lawsuit that was unrelated to the accident with Sneed. Meyers had no reason to anticipate the sudden appearance of this document in the middle of trial and, therefore, had no opportunity to prepare to answer Ballard’s charges that Meyers was claiming the same damages at trial that he had claimed in the other lawsuit.
As the trial court recognized, Meyers’s trial counsel was needed to explain the apparent contradiction between Meyers’s damage claims in the current trial and the amended complaint in the other lawsuit, but he was prohibited by the Code of Professional Responsibility from testifying as a witness.8 Meyers had already testified that he could not recall anything regarding the damages claimed in the amended complaint when it was shown to him. Therefore, he would not have been able to testify on re-direct regarding the exact document that he had testified only a few minutes earlier he could not remember. The majority conveniently ignores this established fact when it asserts Meyers’s trial counsel was not the “sole indispensable witness” to rebut Ballard’s charges of double-dipping. In fact, given Meyers’s lack of recall, Meyers’s trial counsel, as author of the amended complaint, was the only witness who could explain why he had listed damages in the amended complaint that were similar to the damages being sought in this case. By withholding the amended complaint until trial began, Ballard effectively prevented Meyers from being able to present his trial counsel’s proffered explanation, *825which, if persuasive to the jury, would have countered Ballard’s suggestion that Meyers was seeking a double recovery. Admission of the document, without Meyers’s attorney’s explanation, would have unfairly prejudiced Meyers because he would have been unable to present his side of the story, and the jury would have heard only Ballard’s slant on the document.
Third, no reasonable curative measure appears in the record. As the trial court recognized, the best way to cure the prejudice would have been for Meyers’s trial counsel to testify regarding the circumstances surrounding the drafting of the amended complaint and why the complaint did not contradict Meyers’s contention that Sneed had caused most of his injuries. However, because Ballard waited until the trial had started to reveal his intention to use the document from the other lawsuit, Meyers’s lawyer could no longer withdraw and have co-counsel conduct the entire trial, at least not without severely prejudicing Meyers’s case. Having Meyers’s trial lawyer testify on substantive matters before the jury would not have been a reasonable solution.9
Finally, the record is silent regarding the effect the admission of the document would have had on the trial of this case and the court’s docket. The first three factors, however, more than outweigh any considerations regarding the court’s efficient disposition of this case, even assuming this action were the only trial the court had on its calendar and there would have been no cost to the court or the parties in retrying it. Based on Ballard’s intentional withholding of the document and the inability to cure the prejudice to Meyers, the trial court’s exclusion of the complaint from the trial did not result in a manifest injustice, and I would affirm the court of appeals.
3. The majority relies on at least three unsupportable premises to hold that pretrial order disclosure is not required for impeachment documents. First, the majority contends that the Uniform Superior Court Rules require parties to disclose fewer trial exhibits than witnesses. Oral testimony from witnesses, however, is entitled to the same evidentiary weight as documents. As juries throughout Georgia are instructed, the evidence consists of both oral testimony and the documents introduced at trial.10 Reading the uniform rules to require a greater disclosure for one kind of evidence than another makes no sense.
The uniform rule governing trial witnesses (Rule 7.2 (19)) simply requires that a party distinguish between those witnesses that the opposing party can count on being at trial and, therefore, does not *826have to subpoena and those witnesses that may appear at trial, but which the opposing party should subpoena if it wants to question them in person before the jury.11 The rationale for this additional amount of detail, of course, is that witnesses, unlike documents, are not always easily brought to trial.
Second, the majority’s rationale for treating impeachment evidence differently than other evidence renders disclosure of exhibits in pretrial orders meaningless. According to the majority’s logic, “there is no possible justification for requiring disclosure of [impeachment] evidence” because “it is impossible for counsel to know whether impeachment evidence will even be relevant and admissible until the witnesses for the opposing party testify at trial.” The same rationale applies to all rebuttal evidence and for much, if not all, of the defendant’s evidence.12 Basing the pretrial order disclosure requirements on what a party’s attorney “knows” as opposed to “reasonably anticipates” results in the disclosure of very few documents. Other than the documents that a plaintiff needs to avoid a directed verdict, no party can truly “know” whether a document will be relevant and admissible until it tenders that document at trial. From now on, no document will have to be disclosed in the pretrial order so long as a party can claim truthfully that it was uncertain as to whether it would tender that document until the middle of trial.
No later than the close of discovery, every party to a civil action should be able to anticipate which documents will be needed at trial. By using depositions, interrogatories, requests for document production, and its own investigations, a party generally should be able to determine which documents support its case and which documents undermine the opposing party’s case and witnesses. Requiring parties to list the documents they reasonably anticipate will be used at trial is not a burdensome task, even in a case with voluminous documents.
Third, the majority’s mantra that disclosure of impeachment documents will harm the discovery of truth is simply incorrect. As shown here, Meyers testified that he did not remember what damages he had claimed in a different lawsuit. Nothing in the amended complaint suggested that Meyers testified falsely about his lack of recollection. It showed what damages Meyers had claimed in the other lawsuit, not that Meyers’s lack of recall was untruthful. Therefore, the majority’s refrain that witnesses are presumed to testify *827truthfully, while an accurate statement, has nothing to do with the facts in this case.
Decided November 12, 2002
Reconsideration denied December 13, 2002.
Harper, Waldon & Craig, Hilliard V. Castilla, for appellant. John W. Mrosek, Winburn, Lewis, Barrow & Stolz, Irwin W. Stolz, Jr., Gambrell & Stolz, Seaton D. Purdom, for appellees.
Smith, Gilliam, Williams & Miles, Steven P. Gilliam, Robert A. Weber, Mabry & McClelland, Walter B. McClelland, Bovis, Kyle & Burch, James E. Singer, amici curiae.
Furthermore, the entire pretrial disclosure process is designed to promote the discovery of the truth. Requiring a party to disclose documents that it should reasonably anticipate it will tender at trial enables both parties to develop all the relevant evidence more fully and, thereby, reduces lying as well as ambush trial practices, all of which aids the jury’s search for the truth. Permitting a party to introduce a document, without placing the opposing party on notice that it will need to muster its own relevant evidence regarding that document, hinders, rather than advances, the search for the truth by leaving the jury with only one version of the facts.
Fundamental fairness is the essence of our adversarial system of justice.13 Adherence to fundamentally fair procedures guides our search for the truth. Rather than promote the discovery of truth, however, the majority promotes gámesmanship and evasive litigation tactics by rendering meaningless the rule requiring disclosure of trial exhibits in pretrial orders.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Sears joins in this dissent.

 Department of Human Res. v. Phillips, 268 Ga. 316, 318 (486 SE2d 851) (1997) (emphasis supplied).

 See generally OCGA § 24-1-2 (“The object of all legal investigation is the discovery of truth”).

 See OCGA § 9-11-16 (pretrial order “controls the subsequent course of the action unless modified at the trial to prevent manifest injustice”)-, Phillips, 268 Ga. at 318.

 Harper v. Dismukes, 202 F.3d 273 (7th Cir. 1999); Martinez v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 82 F.3d 223, 227 (8th Cir. 1996); Greate Bay Hotel & Casino v. Tose, 34 F.3d 1227, 1236 (3rd Cir. 1994); Perry v. Winspur, 782 F.2d 893, 894 (10th Cir. 1986); see also United States v. Varner, 13 F.3d 1503, 1507 (11th Cir. 1994).

 Minnick v. Lee, 174 Ga. App. 182 (329 SE2d 548) (1985); Allstate Insurance Company v. Reynolds, 138 Ga. App. 582, 588 (227 SE2d 77) (1976).

 Cook v. Huff, 274 Ga. 186, 189 (552 SE2d 83) (2001).

 See, e.g., Dunlap v. City of Oklahoma City, 12 Fed.Appx. 831, 835 (10th Cir. 2001) (“Where a party fails to show any circumstances other than its own neglect to warrant relief from a pretrial order, no reason [to reverse refusal to modify pretrial order] exists.”); Fashauer v. New Jersey Transit Rail Operations, 57 F.3d 1269, 1287 (3rd Cir. 1995) (no abuse of discretion where need for rebuttal testimony “could have been reasonably anticipated”); Bronk v. Ineichen, 54 F.3d 425, 432 (7th Cir. 1995) (no abuse of discretion to exclude rebuttal witness that party knew might be significant); American Int'l Trading Corp. v. Petroleos Mexicanos, 835 F.2d 536, 539 (5th Cir. 1987) (not manifestly unjust to exclude witnesses that party “knew or should have known . . . were necessary”); Keyes v. Lauga, 635 F.2d 330, 335 (5th Cir. Unit A 1981) (no abuse of discretion to exclude rebuttal witnesses whose use “could have been reasonably anticipated”).

 See generally Georgia Code of Professional Responsibility EC 5-9, 5-10, DR 5-102, superseded by Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7.

 See Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7.

 Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions, Vol. I, Civil Cases (3d ed.), I.B.

 Unif. Sup. Ct. R. 7.2 (19) (“Opposing counsel may rely on representation that the designated party will have a witness present unless . . . [sufficient notice is given] ... to allow the other party to subpoena the witness or obtain his testimony by other means.”).

 See Vincent v. State, 264 Ga. 234, 234 (442 SE2d 748) (1994) (may impeach by disproving facts testified to by a witness).

 See, e.g., Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 236 (62 SC 280, 86 LE 166) (1941).