Doctor may be forced to be expert witness

Plaintiffs argue that the facts of the malpractice case require that a gynecologist take the stand.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Feb. 2, 2004.

A case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court has physicians there worried that they might lose some of their freedom to choose whether they will serve as expert witnesses in medical malpractice trials.

Justices will decide this year whether there are "compelling circumstances" to force a woman's new gynecologist to provide expert witness testimony in a case alleging medical malpractice against her former obstetrician-gynecologist.

The Wisconsin Medical Society and the American Medical Association argue that an appellate court was wrong to compel Charles H. Koh, MD, to serve as an expert in the case.

The court said Dr. Koh was required to testify because the plaintiff, Sinora Glenn, had missed the deadline for naming an expert witness and that without expert witness testimony, the case could be dismissed.

The medical associations, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief, say setting the standard so low for forcing an expert witness to testify strips doctors and other professionals of the right to decide when they provide their time and knowledge to the court.

"We are in America, and normally we don't make people do something they don't want to do," said Mark L. Adams, WMS general counsel. "The Wisconsin Medical Society encourages physicians to testify but is opposed to compelled testimony."

As expert witnesses, doctors and other professionals are required to draw on their years of training and experience to draw conclusions, said Michael P. Russart, the Milwaukee attorney representing the ob-gyn sued in the case, Michael T. Plante, MD. The situation cannot be compared, he said, to that of fact witnesses who can be compelled to testify because they observed something that makes them uniquely necessary to a trial.