As promised, over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be publishing a series of articles gleaned from West Coast Casualty’s 2014 Construction Defect Seminar. This article focuses on one appellate decision that impacts attorneys and specifically, their relationship with expert witnesses.
Presented by Thomas Halliwell, Esq. and Barry Vaughan, Esq.
Somehow, in less than an hour, Halliwell and Vaughan ran through dozens and dozens of appellate decisions. But they didn’t just read off of a list, they added a great deal of context and some occasional comments.
I couldn’t type fast enough to cover these master orators and their insightful observations, but I was able to gain access to some notes that they published to accompany the presentation. Under the category of decisions impacting attorneys, there was just one case.
DeLuca v. State Fish Co, Inc. (2013) Cal.App.4th 671
In this case, a former corporate officer filed suit against the corporation. The initial filing involved real estate claims. The Defendant filed its own claim to rescind the deed to the property in question, and additional claims over violation of corporate doctrine. The Defendant also retained an expert to offer testimony at trial.
According to Halliwell and Vaughan:
The trial court declared a mistrial on the unlawful detainer action and found in favor of Defendant on the rescission and corporate opportunity doctrine claims. The Court of Appeal reversed on the rescission and corporate opportunity doctrine claims, and remanded for trial of the unlawful detainer claim.
Then things got interesting…
For the retrial, the Plaintiff in this case retained the same expert witness that had testified on behalf of the Defendant. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Plaintiff’s counsel was disqualified because of the possibility that the expert gave the attorney confidential information.
The case went to appeal:
The Second District Court of Appeal held that the expert witness did not possess any confidential information because once the expert witness was designated a testifying expert, the attorney- client privilege and work product protection were waived as to information conveyed to him by Defendant’s counsel in the prior trial. The Court then found that Defendant failed to establish the rebuttable presumption that confidential information materially related to the pending proceeding was conveyed to the expert witness. The Court stated that even if the information conveyed prior to the expert’s designation as a testifying witness could potentially be covered under the work product doctrine, Defendant failed to show that confidential information was actually conveyed, and moreover, that it was relevant to the pending proceeding.
For even more background on this case, visit FindLaw.
Image courtesy Wikimedia
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