Freshwater v. Scheidt
Supreme Court of Ohio
714 N.E.2d 891 (1999)
Dr. Robert Scheidt (defendant) performed gallbladder surgery on Kathleen Freshwater (plaintiff), who later needed treatment for a perforated bowel she attributed to his malpractice and sued him. At trial, Scheidt's expert, Dr. Zucker, testified about a laparoscopy-textbook article he had invited another doctor to write, calling it helpful and useful and admitting he'd used it in forming his opinion of Scheidt's work, though disagreeing with some of its statements and declining to formally call it "authoritative" because he said he couldn't define what that meant. The trial judge barred Freshwater from cross-examining Zucker using the textbook, the trial ended in judgment for Scheidt, and an appellate court upheld the cross-examination restriction before Freshwater appealed further.
Whether a learned treatise may be used to impeach an expert's testimony when the expert used the treatise in forming his opinion but never expressly called it authoritative.