Court Opinion

ID: 9796313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:55:04.649729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:49:56.393517
License: Public Domain

Cherry, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The majority rejects Thomas’s argument that the district court materially prejudiced her case by allowing any testimony regarding so-called recall bias, concluding that Thomas did not object to the recall bias testimony proffered and that, at any rate, the district court’s error in allowing the testimony was harmless. But in so concluding, the majority gives short shrift to the nature of recall bias evidence in the context of this case, where only Thomas’s credibility was implicated by the recall bias testimony, and the record of Thomas’s repeated objections to any such testimony. I would reverse the district court’s judgment based on this issue, and thus, I dissent from that aspect of the majority’s decision.
As the majority notes, recall bias is typically implicated in large-scale research studies. For instance, in a study of the effects of a certain pharmaceutical drug on a particular segment of the population, recall bias refers to the tendency of research subjects who experience a negative outcome such as cancer or a birth defect to “recall,” inaccurately, that they have been exposed at an earlier time to a suspected or known causal factor of the outcome. As one magazine article appended to a federal court of appeals opinion noted with regard to studies of the connection, if any, between a prenatal pharmaceutical and birth defects, “[wjomen with normal babies may forget they took the drug and those with malformed babies may be more likely to remember — or vice versa. The bias is essentially unmeasureable.’ ’ McBride v. Merrell Dow and Pharmaceuticals Inc., 717 F.2d 1460, 1468 (D.C. Cir. 1983). The implication is that research subjects who experience a negative outcome may be unreliable with regard to whether they were ex*159posed to a suspected causal factor. While the notion of recall bias might be useful in assessing the validity of large-scale research studies, applying it to an individual impermissibly invades the jury’s role of evaluating witness credibility.
When, as here, liability turns on a single witness’s credibility, allowing recall bias testimony effectively constitutes permitting an expert to assess the individual witness’s credibility, the result of which likely is a different verdict than reasonably might have been expected if the testimony had been precluded. See El Cortez Hotel, Inc. v. Coburn, 87 Nev. 209, 213, 484 P.2d 1089, 1091 (1971). Since Thomas offered the primary testimony as to causation in this case, Dr. Panacek’s recall bias testimony, even though stated in general terms, amounted to testifying as to Thomas’s credibility. That is, because only Thomas experienced a negative outcome— specifically, her husband’s death — the recall bias theory discussed by Dr. Panacek necessarily must have been connected to Thomas’s testimony as to this fundamental issue, suggesting that her testimony was not credible. The majority agrees that there is little difference between general questions about recall bias and the question that would have tied the concept directly to this case, ante at 14 (citing Townsend v. State, 103 Nev. 113, 118-19, 734 P.2d 705, 709 (1987)), but refuses to address the problem because the majority believes Thomas failed to raise a contemporaneous objection to Dr. Panacek’s recall bias testimony.
But Thomas objected to such evidence at least four times before the district court decided to address the issue, and a fifth time during the same colloquy out of which the majority selects two statements to conclude that Thomas waived any objection. Thomas first objected to all recall bias testimony through a motion in limine to exclude any such testimony from being offered at trial. The majority dismisses the motion-in-limine objection as merely objecting to Dr. Panacek’s qualifications to give recall bias testimony, not to recall bias testimony itself. But the majority ignores the import of Thomas’s motion-in-limine argument that recall bias “is not even subject to expert application” — an objection, not to Dr. Panacek’s qualifications, but to the general subject of recall bias. Indeed, Thomas supported her statement with a citation to Santillanes v. State, 104 Nev. 699, 765 P.2d 1147 (1988), in which this court recognized that the admissibility of scientific evidence depends on its trustworthiness and reliability, indicating that Thomas questioned the substance of recall bias evidence. Undoubtedly, then, Thomas was objecting to the admission of any recall bias testimony based on lack of reliability and trustworthiness, not based on Dr. Panacek’s qualifications to testify about it, as the majority contends.
The district court deferred ruling on that aspect of Thomas’s motion in limine until the pretrial conference. At the pretrial con*160ference, Thomas again objected to the presentation of any recall bias testimony, but the district court deferred ruling on the objection until trial. At trial, just before Dr. Panacek was called to testify, Thomas objected a third time. On the district court’s inquiry as to any outstanding motion-in-limine issues regarding Dr. Panacek, Thomas reminded the court that it had yet to rule regarding “the recall bias testimony of Dr. Panacek” and his correspondingly “speculating on [Thomas’s] state of mind” at the time of the events at issue. The district court again deferred ruling on the issue, explaining that it needed to first hear the testimony. When Dr. Panacek began his testimony regarding recall bias, Thomas did not raise her fourth objection until respondents asked Dr. Panacek whether recall bias was a factor in this case. A colloquy outside of the jury’s presence followed, during which the district court sustained Thomas’s objection to Dr. Panacek tying recall bias to Thomas, but overruled her objection to Dr. Panacek’s more general recall bias testimony.
In the face of Thomas’s numerous objections to any recall bias testimony, the majority nonetheless affirms based on two statements that Thomas made. First, during Thomas’s third objection, when Thomas objected during trial, just before Dr. Panacek testified, she stated that she would “wait and see” whether the questions posed to Dr. Panacek were objectionable. Second, during the colloquy after Thomas’s fourth objection to any recall bias testimony, Thomas offered that she intentionally did not object at the time Dr. Panacek began to testify regarding recall bias testimony because she did not find general recall bias testimony objectionable. But the majority fails to mention that moments later, during that same colloquy, Thomas made a fifth objection to any recall bias testimony being offered, stating that because “only plaintiffs have any recall in this case[, e]ven the general information is prejudicial [and] without probative value.”
And regardless of the two statements on which the majority relies, Thomas’s third objection, raised before Dr. Panacek began testifying, certainly constitutes the contemporaneous objection necessary to preserve this issue for appeal. See Richmond v. State, 118 Nev. 924, 929-32, 59 P.3d 1249, 1252-54 (2002). After the district court deferred ruling on Thomas’s objection as to the admissibility of recall bias testimony a third time, explaining that it needed to first hear the testimony, the district court was at least implicitly, if not explicitly, ruling that it would admit general testimony regarding recall bias. Given that the district court repeatedly refused to rule on Thomas’s objections until finally deciding the issue during the colloquy, it is unclear what else Thomas could have done without alienating the jury. See Bocher v. Glass, 874 So. 2d 701, *161704 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2004) (recognizing that counsel risks alienating the jury with repeated objections). Even the district court was convinced that the objection had been preserved, as evidenced by the district court assuring Thomas that she had, in fact, preserved for appeal-her objection to the recall bias testimony. Considered along with Thomas’s first four objections, the record demonstrates that Thomas sufficiently preserved the issue despite the two inconsistent statements made during her third and fourth objections to recall bias testimony.
The majority fails to appreciate the substantial prejudicial effect of permitting even general recall bias testimony that directly implicated Thomas’s right to have a jury resolve the issue of her credibility and correspondingly declines to discuss that issue based on an incomplete analysis of the extent to which Thomas attempted to preclude any recall bias testimony from the trial and preserve the issue for appeal; I therefore respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s decision concluding that Thomas failed to preserve the admissibility issue for appeal and that, even if she had, allowing the recall bias testimony was merely harmless error. Had the district court properly precluded the presentation of this recall bias testimony, a different result reasonably might have been reached and the judgment should thus be reversed.
The district court abused its discretion by allowing any testimony whatsoever regarding recall bias. The correct and prudent action would have been to disallow any and all testimony concerning recall bias because such testimony, whether generally presented or specifically related to this case, in which only Thomas’s credibility was at issue, invades the province of the jury and is definitely prejudicial. In light of the above, I respectfully dissent and would award Thomas a new trial free of any mention of recall bias.