MBlawg

The University of Richmond School of Law’s Trial Advocacy Board (“TAB”) recently hosted the second annual MKB Trial Advocacy Competition.  By way of background, TAB is a student-run organization made up of 20 to 30 students, from all grade levels at the Law School, interested in honing their trial skills for local, regional and national mock trial competitions.  Teams are chosen from the members of TAB to represent the school in regional and national inter-scholastic trial competitions.  Selection to TAB also is based on a trial competition, which, for the second time, has been sponsored by Moran Kiker Brown. 

Members of MKB joined other attorneys and legal professionals throughout the Richmond area to judge teams of first and second year law students …

Last month, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled for the first time regarding the specificity requirement for expert disclosures pursuant to Rule 4:1(b)(4)(a)(i). In John Crane v. Estate of Garland Jones, the Court affirmed a trial court’s exclusion of the defendant’s expert testimony that was not specifically set forth in an expert disclosure. These opinions were excluded even though the opinions were actually discovered by the plaintiff’s counsel in depositions or in their possession from discovery in other similar litigation. Click here for a more detailed summary of the opinion.

In my experience, this is a significant departure from standard practice in Virginia state courts, where parties frequently use the disclosures to put opposing counsel on notice of their expert witnesses’ identity and general opinions. Detailed discovery of expert witnesses has traditionally been reserved for deposition. Now, apparently, an expert will …