Court Opinion

ID: 9737590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:29:24.054292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:00.027352
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COOK, specially concurring: I disagree with the majority’s statement that “none of Rule 213’s disclosure requirements applies to cross-examining an opposing party’s opinion witness.” 329 Ill. App. 3d at 577. Rule 213, as amended March 28, 2002, effective July 1, 2002, specifically recognizes that freedom to cross-examine is subject to a restriction that in multiple-party cases a cross-examiner may not elicit undisclosed information from the witness of a party with which he is aligned. Official Reports Advance Sheet No. 8 (April 17, 2002), R. 213(g), eff. July 1, 2002. I believe amended Rule 213 clarifies the existing rule and does not change it. Other situations may also present problems. If plaintiff decides on the day of trial not to call a witness he has previously disclosed, and defendant calls the witness instead, is plaintiff freed from compliance with Rule 213 during his cross-examination? If defendant calls a treating physician whom he has previously disclosed, and the court eventually determines that the witness is hostile and may be examined “as if under cross-examination” (188 Ill. 2d R. 238(b)), may the defendant continue his questioning, his “cross-examination,” free of the restrictions imposed by Rule 213? Consider another hypothetical situation closer to the facts of this case: defendant has a theory that he would like to introduce by way of an expert treatise; defendant chooses not to use his own expert to discuss the treatise because he would then have to disclose the treatise under Rule 213; instead, defendant introduces the treatise by cross-examining plaintiffs treating physician. (Amended Rule 213 recognizes that treating physicians may be independent, not strongly aligned with the plaintiff who calls them.) The focus of amended Rule 213 is away from bright-line rules and toward doing substantial justice between the parties, with trials decided on the merits. I suggest that, in the examples given, the trial court has discretion not to allow the testimony. There is a tension in these cases between providing full and fair discovery and exclusion of evidence simply to enforce meaningless technicalities. The solution is not bright-line rules but a trial court which understands the objectives of Rule 213 and is able to apply them to the unique facts before it.