Hybrid witnesses include treating physicians, investigating engineers, and company employees who observed events and also offer opinions. Disclosure obligations depend on whether the opinions were formed in the ordinary course or for litigation.
Courts differ on how to categorize them.
Alternative Names:
Hybrid Fact-Expert Witness, Dual Role Witness
Why it Matters?
The categorization determines disclosure obligations and is frequently contested, since an employee engineer who investigated an incident may be a fact witness as to what he observed and a retained expert as to opinions developed later. The safe approach is full disclosure where any doubt exists, because the cost of an unnecessary report is far less than exclusion of the testimony. Limiting instructions at trial rarely resolve the confusion cleanly.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
How are hybrid witnesses categorized?
What is the safe approach?
