Court Opinion

ID: 9639586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:24:11.413998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:39.334211
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN N. LIMBAUGH, JR., C.J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
I would hold that it was an abuse of discretion to prohibit Dr. Mozier from testifying that he found records confirming that the date of his farm visits regarding the three aborted cows occurred after the cows’ ingestion of aflatoxin-contaminated feed. The prejudice is clear because the testimony went to the heart of the case— whether the culling of 126 cows from the *804herd, of a value of some $600,000, was necessitated by the aflatoxin incident. Moreover, there is no doubt the evidence was critical to the jury’s deliberation in view of the jury questions submitted at the end of the case as a follow-up to Dr. Mozier’s response to the initial jury questions.
The crux of the majority’s position is that the trial court’s decision prohibiting the testimony was justified as a sanction for a discovery violation. According to the majority, because Dr. Mozier was a retained expert under plaintiffs’ “control,” plaintiffs were under a duty to produce all relevant materials in Dr. Mozier’s possession, and the lab reports in particular, despite the fact that plaintiffs had no knowledge of the existence of the reports. In my opinion, however, it is not at all clear that plaintiffs violated their discovery obligations by Dr. Mozier’s failure to disclose the reports.
The discovery rule relied on by the majority, Rule 58.01(a), provides that a party to a suit is required to furnish upon request any relevant material that it has in its “possession, custody, or control.” The majority concedes that plaintiffs had no possession or custody of the records in question and no actual control of the records. Instead, the majority appears to rely on a theory of imputed, or constructive, control. Though I agree that the rule contemplates imputed or constructive control under some circumstances, I question whether the rule applies where plaintiff did not even know of the existence of the records. In addition, the control factor must be discounted further by the fact that plaintiffs gave defendants an authorization form allowing defendants to seek the records directly from Dr. Mozier, so that the records were equally available to both sides. See Brotherton v. Burlington Northern R.R., 672 S.W.2d 133, 136 (Mo.App.1984).
In effect, the majority fashions a new rule that all materials and information held by an expert witness, even an expert who, like Dr. Mozier, is also a fact witness, see Brandt v. Medical Defense Associates, 856 S.W.2d 667, 673 (Mo. banc 1993), is always under the control of the party calling the expert. I have found no Missouri case directly supporting the new rule. The cases cited by the majority on the control question are either out of context or applicable only by extrapolation. State v. Whitfield, 837 S.W.2d 503 (Mo. banc 1992), is a death penalty case that turns on criminal procedure Rule 25.03, a discovery provision that is much more comprehensive and demanding than the civil rules counterpart. Furthermore, unlike the case at hand, there was no question that the state had exclusive “control” of the witness and the coat with bullet holes worn by the witness because she was one of the victims of the crime. State ex rel. Tracy v. Dandurand, 30 S.W.3d 831 (Mo. banc 2000), stated only that a party has “control” over an expert witness in the sense that the party can elect whether to call the expert at trial, and that records given by the party to the expert are still subject to the attorney-client privilege if the expert is not designated as a trial witness. State ex rel. American Economy Ins. Co. v. Crawford, 75 S.W.3d 244 (Mo. banc 2002), makes no mention of the control question except to repeat Tracy’s statement that a party has control over its expert witnesses and, interestingly, to characterize the statement as dicta. Id. at 246. Finally, the federal First Circuit cases Ortiz-Lopez v. Sociedad Española de Auxilio Mutuo y Beneficiencia de Puerto Rico, 248 F.3d 29 (1st Cir.2001), and Klonoski v. Mahlab, 156 F.3d 255 (1st Cir.1998), are distinguishable because neither case involved an authorization form given to the party seeking discovery so as to afford both parties equal access.
*805In short, I am skeptical that under our rules, Dr. Mozier’s failure to disclose the records constitutes a discovery violation that should be charged to plaintiffs. Plaintiffs, themselves, did not have actual possession, custody or control of the records, much less knowledge of the existence of the records. In fact, had any of the parties known of the existence of the records, they were equally available to all. Even if there was a technical discovery violation charged to plaintiffs, the circumstances here preclude the harsh sanction imposed by the trial court. Given the critical nature of the testimony, the fact that by all accounts Dr. Mozier’s failure to disclose was inadvertent, not intentional, and further, the need to balance the vigilant enforcement of the rules of discovery with an abiding concern for a truth-seeking process, the trial court should have sought an alternative solution. The proper recourse was to have allowed the testimony after affording defendants sufficient time to examine the reports, depose Dr. Mozier and prepare for cross-examination. After all, this is not a case in which plaintiffs were “sandbagging” the defendants, withholding evidence in order to surprise the defendants at trial. Nor is this a case in which the late disclosure of the evidence gave rise to the need for an independent investigation to determine the veracity of the evidence, or the need to secure expert testimony to contravene the evidence. Indeed, even from a strategic standpoint, defendants would have suffered no prejudice because their defense of lack of causation, and their evidence in support of that defense, would have been the same with or without the introduction of Dr. Mozier’s records.
For these reasons, I would reverse and remand for a new trial.