Responding Expert Reports Must Be Tendered in Party's Case in Chief

Interesting procedural reasons for judgement were released today by the BC Supreme Court, Vancouver Registry, addressing when a party must tender responding expert reports.
In today’s case (Cambie Surgeries Corporation v. British Columbia) the Plaintiffs sought to tender their responding expert reports after the Defendant tendered their expert reports. The Defendant objected noting the reports should properly be admitted as part of the Plaintiff’s case in chief.  In agreeing with the Defendant Mr. Justice Steeves provided the following reasons:

[9]             It seems to me that the Rules are intended to promote efficiency in a trial. Historically, expert opinion evidence was given simply by a notice, as described in Abell v. British Columbia (Greater Nanaimo Water District), 1979 CanLII 657 (BC SC), but now there are strict requirements. With respect to reply reports, they are intended to avoid parties putting in reply reports at trial for the first time. Here the plaintiffs’ position would not bring back that situation entirely; however, it would at least open up the risk of sur-reply expert reports, thus possibly lengthening these proceedings.

[10]         Overall I conclude that, while it is always open to a party to apply to apply to call rebuttal evidence, a responding expert under the Rules is quite a different part of a trial. In short, a responding expert report is not rebuttal evidence in the usual sense of being in response to unanticipated evidence. In my view, as with all anticipated evidence, the plaintiffs must call and exhaust their evidence. This is paraphrasing of the judgement in Commercial Electronics v. Savics, 2011 BCSC 162. The plaintiffs will examine their expert witnesses about their reports, including responding reports as part of their case.