Cafro v. Brophy

In Cafro v. Brophy, 62 Conn. App. 113, 774 A.2d 206, cert. denied, 256 Conn. 932, 776 A.2d 1149 (2001), the defendants claimed that the court improperly allowed an engineer, who had been retained by the plaintiffs and disclosed for the first time near the conclusion of the defendants' case in violation of Practice Book 13-4 (4), to testify as an expert witness in the plaintiffs' rebuttal case. Cafro v. Brophy, supra, 117-18. The engineer testified as to his opinion that the structure at issue was defective, not compliant with appropriate building codes, and that it would have to be demolished from the second floor framing upward and rebuilt at a cost of $ 180,000. Id. In Cafro, we held that the trial court had abused its discretion because the expert testimony, by a previously undisclosed expert witness, "destroyed" the defendants' case where the testimony decided a hotly contested issue and the defendants could not otherwise prepare for such testimony. Id., 119.