CESAR ALVARENGA,
v.
MILOS ENTERPRISES INC.,
AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.
The appellate court affirmed a trial court's decision in a slip-and-fall case. The court upheld the exclusion of a late-disclosed expert witness and the subsequent jury verdict for the defendant, finding no abuse of discretion by the trial judge.
No, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in striking the late-disclosed expert witness. The appellate court also found no other reversible errors in the pretrial rulings or the jury verdict.
[1] A trial court has discretion to strike a late-disclosed expert witness when the disclosure occurs after court-ordered deadlines and shortly before trial.
[2] A party seeking to overturn a trial court's ruling on the qualification of an expert witness must demonstrate an abuse of discretion.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“The qualification of a person as an expert is within the sound discretion of the trial judge”
Establishes the standard of review for the exclusion of an expert witness.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceCesar Alvarenga sued Milos Enterprises, a McDonald's franchisee, for injuries sustained in a slip and fall. Alvarenga attempted to disclose a liabilit…
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PER CURIAM.
Cesar Alvarenga appeals certain pretrial rulings, an adverse jury verdict, and a final judgment for the defendant in his lawsuit against the appellee, Milos Enterprises, Inc., franchisee/operator of a McDonald’s restaurant (“Milos”). Mr. Alvarenga sought damages for injuries allegedly sustained when he slipped and fell on a wet floor and “wet floor” sign in Milos’s premises. For the reasons which follow, we affirm the challenged pretrial rulings, the jury verdict, and the final judgment.
The trial court struck Mr. Alvarenga’s late-disclosed and purported expert witness on liability following a motion by Milos. Although the lawsuit was filed in April 2015, and expert witness disclosures had been ordered for February 8, 2018, Mr. Alvarenga did not make the court-ordered disclosure regarding Mr. Gill until March 13, 2018—hours after a court-ordered mediation impassed, and less than four weeks before the scheduled jury trial.
Milos’s motion to strike the purported liability expert from the witness list was heard March 27 and 29, 2018. The trial court granted the motion to strike at the March 27 hearing, “without prejudice to [Mr. Alvarenga] to provide for the court’s consideration case law on the necessity of a liability expert in this case at the upcoming hearing on Thursday, March 29.” The March 29 hearing was conducted, but was not transcribed and made a part of the record before us. The jury trial also was not transcribed, and thus also is not before us.
Mr. Alvarenga did not file additional case law regarding the purported liability expert’s proposed testimony or justification for the untimely disclosure. The case was tried without the purported liability expert’s testimony.
Mr. Alvarenga’s claims on appeal fail to demonstrate reversible error. In addition to the absence of a proffer and sufficient record, see Applegate v. Barnett Bank of Tallahassee, 377 So. 2d 1150, 1152 (Fla. 1979), “[t]he qualification of a person as an expert is within the sound discretion of the trial judge,” Penalver v. State, 926 So. 2d 1118, 1134 (Fla. 2006). We find no abuse of that discretion in the present case.
Affirmed.
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- Penalver v. State, 926 So. 2d 1118 (Fla. 2006)