Court Opinion

ID: 9789233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:30:55.709158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:44:38.734930
License: Public Domain

SWANN, Judge,
specially concurring.
¶ 75 I concur with the court’s opinion in its entirety. I write separately, however, because I believe that the record reveals a structural error in these proceedings that independently requires reversal. See Perkins v. Komarnyckyj, 172 Ariz. 115, 119-20, 834 P.2d 1260, 1264-65 (1992) (“ ‘structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism,’ ... defy analysis by harmless error standai’ds” (quoting Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991)) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The error, in my view, lies in the expansive role that the Special Master played in the trial of this ease.
¶ 76 Three years before trial, the parties agreed in a Joint Pretrial Memorandum that the court should appoint a special master “to aid in the oversight and mechanics of the substantial efforts to be required to resolve the some 30,000 counts.” But their respective visions of the authority of the special master differed significantly. The Hospitals sought an order that the special master conduct hearings to decide the merits of the sample claims after consulting with a statistical expert. The court effectively adopted this proposal.38
¶ 77 The County proposed a three-track system consisting of discovery and litigation of key issues (Track One), “scrubbing” and withdrawal of meritless claims (Track Two) and ongoing settlement negotiations run by a separate special master (Track Three). The County sought a special master to supervise Track One, but specifically noted: “Track One can be facilitated proeedurally by a special master, but the County believes that this Court should make all substantive legal decisions.” The County further expressed its position that “the special master for Track One should not make findings of fact and conclusions of law. The Court should make the substantive rulings required by Track One.” The County made clear in the Joint Pretrial Memorandum that it objected to the use of sampling and to trial proceedings involving findings of fact by a special master.
¶ 78 Without the agreement of both parties, the court was only able to appoint a special master to hold trial proceedings if appointment was warranted by “(i) some exceptional condition or (ii) the need to perform an accounting or resolve a difficult computation of damages.” Ariz. R. Civ. P. 53(a)(1)(B). To be sure, this was an exceptional case that involved a very difficult computation of damages. But there is no nexus between these circumstances and the role that the Special Master actually performed.
¶ 79 First, the trial before the Special Master consumed only forty hours per side — well within the duration and complexity of bench trials normally conducted by the court. There is nothing extraordinary about a trial of this length that merited appointment of a special master without the parties’ express agreement. Second, while the ease involved difficult questions of damages, there was nothing about the role of the Special Master in the trial of this case that added any value to the traditional judicial process. The intricacies of the damage calculation were performed by others — specialists in the medical billing records and an expert statistician. Instead of performing an analysis of damages that required skills and resources otherwise unavailable to the court, the Special Master in this case merely considered such *146analyses in a manner identical to a judge. Though the court might properly have engaged a person with such special expertise as a master to make findings and recommendations concerning the damage calculation, the use of a special master to conduct a traditional trial as surrogate judge was not warranted by the circumstances enumerated in the rule.39
¶ 80 The use of special masters has become increasingly common as judicial caseloads have expanded, but it merits note that special masters are not to be employed to serve the traditional functions of judges — their role is limited by the narrow purposes of Rule 53. The comment to the 2003 amendment to Fed.R.Civ.P. 53 (the federal counterpart to Ariz. R. Civ. P. 53) illustrates the point: “District judges bear primary responsibility for the work of their courts. A master should be appointed only in limited circumstances .... Use of masters for the core functions of trial has been progressively limited.”
¶ 81 It is the rare circumstance indeed in which a special master may be appointed without agreement to perform work (such as the disposition of contentious discovery disputes) that could be performed as well by the assigned trial judge. And it has long been recognized that special masters are to be used “sparingly.” See 9A Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2603, at 560, 557 (3d ed. 2008) (“[T]he procedural advantage that might be derived from a reference to a master must be weighed against the fact that it deprives litigants of their traditional right to have aspects of their case passed upon by a court or jury in the first instance. And even the supposed procedural advantage must be considered in light of the expense and delay to which the litigants will be subjected by a reference under Rule 53. Litigants ought not be asked to bear the expense of a reference if the matter is one that the judge easily might hear and determine.”). Because Ariz. R. Civ. P. 53 substantially mirrors its federal counterpart, I believe these considerations should bear on the appointment of masters under our rules. Here, in the absence of an agreement by the parties, I conclude that the Special Master’s trial role resulted in an improperly constituted tribunal.

. The Court’s Opinion notes that ultimately the parties jointly urged the trial court to adopt the Special Master's proposed trial management plan. In my view, this does not constitute agreement to the Special Master's trial role. The Special Master's proposed plan came after the trial court's rejection of the County's proposal, its decision to employ sampling and its assur-anees that the County's objections to the Hospitals’ methodology had been preserved. Against this background, the County’s cooperation with a plan to which it objected was a practical necessity, not a voluntary act, and should not be treated as a waiver of its right to have the case tried to the court.

. To the extent that the Special Master simply assisted in the orderly administration of pretrial matters, that role was proper under Ariz. R. Civ. P. 53(a)(1)(C) because the parties consented to that role. The adjudication of more than 40,000 claims presents a nearly unprecedented administrative burden, and the court acted well within its discretion in enlisting the assistance of a master for these purposes.