Court Opinion

ID: 9522559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:28:53.909307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:03:15.905942
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: Discovery is designed to illuminate the issues and evidence in the case, and in that manner promote a fair settlement or fair adjudication in the matter. (Ostendorf v. International Harvester Co. (1982), 89 Ill. 2d 273, 282.) The value of the discovery process is reduced considerably, however, if counsel is not able to rely on the accuracy and thoroughness of the disclosures made by another party pursuant to appropriate discovery requests. Here, plaintiff’s counsel failed to disclose Dr. Schreiber as a treating physician in response to the defendant’s interrogatories. Later, plaintiff’s counsel did not list Dr. Schreiber as a potential witness when the trial judge asked the parties, prior to trial, to identify their witnesses. Apparently, it was not until defense counsel saw Dr. Schreiber in the courthouse on the second day of trial that counsel had any inkling that he would be called to testify. As our Rule 219(c) makes clear, a trial judge has a number of options in fashioning an appropriate remedy for a discovery violation. (134 Ill. 2d R. 219(c).) Particularly severe measures, such as the exclusion of evidence or the declaration of a mistrial, will be avoided if a less onerous alternative is sufficient. (See People v. Eyler (1989), 133 Ill. 2d 173, 221; People v. Weaver (1982), 92 Ill. 2d 545, 561; Curran Contracting Co. v. Woodland Hills Development Co. (1992), 235 Ill. App. 3d 406, 412.) In the present case, the trial judge allowed defense counsel time during trial in which to depose Dr. Schreiber, believing that a deposition at that late date would be the proper remedy in the circumstances shown here. One may question whether a midtrial deposition is generally an adequate remedy for a party’s failure to disclose the identity of an important witness. By that time, of course, trial strategy has been set, opening statements have been made, and other witnesses have been examined. Although in this case Dr. Schreiber had been called to defense counsel’s attention through the deposition testimony of another person, defense counsel’s apparent belief that Dr. Schreiber would not be called to testify would only have been reinforced when plaintiff’s counsel failed to include him as a potential witness in response to the trial judge’s pretrial request for a list of witnesses. Still, a trial judge enjoys broad discretion in deciding which remedy to impose for a discovery violation, and review of those determinations is heavily deferential. (See Ashford v. Ziemann (1984), 99 Ill. 2d 353, 369.) The trial judge’s resolution of the problem here does not appear to have been an abuse of discretion, and for that reason I concur in the court’s judgment in the present case.