Bruce Martindale, Plaintiff-Appellant-Petitioner v. Bruce A. Ripp, City of Beloit, Pekin Insurance Company, and…

Summary

The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the circuit court erroneously exercised its discretion in excluding the plaintiff's oral-surgeon expert testimony and diagram explaining how the whiplash from a rear-end collision with a garbage truck caused his temporomandibular joint (TMJ) injuries, and that the error was not harmless because causation was the decisive issue at trial. It affirmed the exclusion of testimony and exhibits about remotely conceivable complications of possible future TMJ surgery, reversed the court of appeals, and remanded for a new trial. Chief Justice Abrahamson concurred, referring to her harmless-error concurrence in Evelyn C.R.; Justice Wilcox, joined by Justice Crooks, dissented on the ground that the exclusion of the mechanism testimony was a sound exercise of discretion, and Justice Crooks wrote separately to criticize the majority's 'reasonable possibility' formulation of the harmless-error standard.