Marier c. R., 2014 QCCA 1113
[20] Pendant qu’il s’affairait à contre-interroger le docteur Faucher, l’avocat de l’appelant a voulu le questionner relativement à l’affaire Marshall, dans laquelle il avait eu à se prononcer à l’égard de la peine. L’intimée s’est aussitôt opposée en plaidant que cela ne pouvait avoir quelque pertinence au regard du procès.
[23] Le juge a choisi d’appliquer à la situation les principes dégagés dans l’arrêt Karaibrahimovic[4] où le juge Fraser y explique en effet que :
9 The difficulty is that there is no effective way of determining with certainty the factual foundation for credibility findings in other trials. Nor could one necessarily determine if the evidence, including expert evidence, had been rejected and if so, for what reasons. Reviewing all the evidence in a prior case would not assist since this would not reveal the reasons why a trier of fact might have accepted or rejected a witness's evidence. Nor would a review of the decision in the earlier case necessarily prove determinative. If a jury verdict were involved, no reasons would have been given. And if the prior case had been a trial by judge alone, the reasons may not reveal the rationale for accepting or rejecting a witness's evidence. And even if the judgment did so, there may be compelling reasons why those considerations would not in any event apply to the present case.
10 When a decision is made which is inconsistent with an expert's opinion, it does not follow that the expert's opinion was rejected by the trier of fact on the basis that it lacked merit. Expert opinions may be rejected for several reasons, a number of which could legitimately affect a subsequent assessment of the worth of that expert's opinion, and a number of which clearly do not. A trier of fact may well have decided that an expert's opinion was not as compelling as the contrary opinion of an expert for the other side. Or that the expert was not as accomplished or experienced as another expert witness. Or that the expert was not diligent enough in the investigatory work he or she did in assessing whether the required evidentiary foundation for his or her opinion existed. All of these considerations may rightly affect the relative worth of one expert's opinion over another's. On the other hand, the trier of fact may have found that the Crown had proven the existence of other more compelling facts implicating the accused and rendering the expert's opinion redundant; or that the underlying factual foundation for the opinion had not been proven.
11 Similarly, investigating facts and issues that are collateral to a trial is precisely what the collateral evidence rule seeks to avoid: The Law of Evidence in Canada, supra, at 963. The rationale for the collateral evidence rule, that is to avoid mini-trials within trials on collateral issues, applies with equal force to cross-examining experts about the treatment of their testimony in prior cases.
[24] L’appelant ne fait pas voir d’erreur déterminante dans la décision du juge. Le contre-interrogatoire du docteur Faucher ne pouvait porter sur la méthode qu’il y avait utilisée et les opinions émises puisque son intervention dans l’affaire Marshall ne portait pas sur l’état d’esprit de celui-ci au moment des événements. Il s’agissait plutôt d’être en mesure d’individualiser la peine qui devait être adéquate tant pour l’accusé que pour la société.
[25] Le refus du juge du procès de permettre le contre-interrogatoire de l’expert sur un aspect collatéral ne lui a causé aucun préjudice.
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