At the urging of the medical and insurance industries, Maryland adopted an unusual law that limits the ability to call an expert witness in malpractice cases. At the time Brown v. Falk & Karim P.A. was litigated, Maryland law prohibited the use of an expert witness in malpractice cases if the expert spent more than 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} of his or her professional time acting as an expert witness.

The question in Brown was whether an expert’s word about the time spent working as an expert witness is sufficient to satisfy the 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule. On appeal, the court decided that an expert should be prepared to surrender detailed time records to prove the percentage of time spent in medical practice versus the time spent as an expert witness.

Facts of the Case

Brenda Brown sued Dr. Joel Falik for medical malpractice after her husband died. Brown alleged that Falik’s negligence during her husband’s back surgery caused her husband’s death.

Maryland law required Brown to certify, at the time the lawsuit was filed, that her case was supported by an expert opinion. Brown certified that Dr. Sanford Davne, an orthopedic surgeon, would testify that Dr. Falik failed to recognize that Brown’s husband was a high-risk patient and failed to advise Brown’s husband about less dangerous treatments for his back pain.

Dr. Davne’s certification stated that less than 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} of his annual activities were devoted to testifying as an expert. Dr. Davne testified in a deposition that the statement was accurate, but explained that he kept no records of time devoted to expert witness work and time devoted to other work.

The trial court eventually ordered Dr. Davne to produce his tax returns. The defense apparently regarded his income from various kinds of work as a proxy for the amount of time he spent working to produce that income.

At trial, the defense claimed that Dr. Davne had not produced sufficient tax returns to prove that he satisfied the 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule. The judge denied a motion to disqualify Dr. Davne and denied a motion for judgment after Brown presented her case.

The jury returned a verdict in Brown’s favor and awarded her more than $900,000 in damages. The judge eventually concluded that Dr. Davne was not qualified to testify and granted a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Brown appealed.

The 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} Rule

For decades, the medical and insurance industries have worked diligently to make it more difficult for victims of medical negligence to prove their cases. Some of their efforts have focused on vilifying experts who testify for plaintiffs. Compliant legislators have responded to industry lobbyists by enacting a variety of laws to prevent qualified experts from testifying for plaintiffs.

Maryland’s 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule was one such law. The law was later amended to exclude expert witnesses who devoted more than 25{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} of their time to testifying as an expert during the previous year.

The fact that a doctor often testifies as an expert has no rational relationship to whether the doctor is competent to testify. While the medical and insurance industry refers to such experts as “hired guns,” they use that term exclusively to refer to experts hired by plaintiffs. Insurance companies hire the same experts to testify over and over in toxic tort cases, but they never refer to their own experts as hired guns. Whether the frequency of testimony affects an expert’s credibility is a decision that should be made by juries, not by legislators who serve the interests of corporate lobbyists.

As the Baltimore Sun argued, the 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule is an arbitrary standard. It applies only in medical malpractice cases because the insurance industry knows how difficult it is for plaintiffs to find a doctor who is willing to testify against another doctor. Brave experts who are willing to give truthful testimony in response to a malpractice epidemic are in demand, so the insurance industry strives to limit their availability.

Notably, nobody claims that Dr. Davne’s lacks the training or experience to advance an expert opinion. Nor does anyone claim that, but for the 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule, a jury would not be entitled to accept Dr. Davne’s testimony as credible. The 20{d61575bddc780c1d4ab39ab904bf25755f3b8d1434703a303cf443ba00f43fa4} rule therefore took compensation away from the widow of a malpractice victim that a jury decided she deserved.

Appellate Opinion

At the time of trial, Maryland law required a plaintiff to prove that the expert witness did not “devote annually more than 20 percent of [his] professional activities to activities that directly involve testimony in personal injury claims.” Maryland courts view the statute as requiring a mathematical calculation. Courts divide the amount of time that the witness is directly involved in expert testimony by the amount of time that the witness spends performing all professional activities.

After disavowing the need for an “exhaustive accounting of an expert’s timesheets,” the court criticized Dr. Davne for failing to produce timesheets that accounted for the time he spent on patient care and other professional activities. The court also faulted him for not producing a list of every case in which he had ever provided services as an expert.

Dr. Davne did provide an affidavit that described the time he spent on professional activities and expert witness activities, but Dr. Davne’s word was not good enough for the appellate court. He also produced his tax returns, but the court wasn’t satisfied that a calculation could be made from the income information supplied to tax authorities.

The court also thought that Dr. Davne’s testimony about the income he received from expert testimony undermined his affidavit. Since expert testimony often commands a higher hourly rate than other work, it is difficult to correlate time spent on an activity with income received from that activity. In any event, the court of appeals agreed that Dr. Davne’s failure to produce detailed records of his time spent as an expert and in professional practice disqualified him from testifying.

Lessons Learned

Whether an expert has the training, experience, and knowledge to opine about a standard of care is wholly unrelated to how much time the expert devotes to giving that testimony. The Maryland rule harms malpractice victims by depriving juries of valuable testimony while shielding negligent doctors from the consequences of their malpractice.

In light of the Maryland rule, however, plaintiff’s lawyers bringing malpractice cases in Maryland must be careful to select experts who keep track of the time they spend in their professional practices and the time they spend working as an expert witness. Gathering that data will not be as easy as the court seems to suggest.

Since billing records do not reflect the hours a doctor spends reading medical journals or engaging in other nonbillable work that is part of the practice of medicine, witnesses may need to estimate their hours in practice by examining the hours they spend in the office (or attending continuing education seminars) each year. They can probably rely on hourly billing records to determine the time they spend testifying as an expert witness. Doctors who regularly testify as experts should take note of Maryland law and retain those records so that they are qualified to testify in Maryland.