Case ID: daly-ny_15/html/0504-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bookstaver, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Thomas E. McCabe, Respondent, against The Dry Dock, East Broadway, & Battery R. Co., Appellant.
    (Decided February 3d, 1890.)
    In an action for injuries to plaintiffs wagon caused by the alleged negligence of one of defendant’s car drivers, evidence of conversations which plaintiff had with one of defendant’s drivers a considerable time after the accident, is not admissible; such conversations are not a part of the res gestee.
    
    "Appeal from a judgment of the District Court in the City of New York for the Eleventh Judicial District.
    The facts are stated in the opinion.
    
      Robinson, Scribner, & Bright, for appellant.
    
      
      T. J. Shea, for respondent.
   Bookstaver, J.

This is an action brought by the plaintiff» to recover of the defendant damages by reason, as he claims, of a negligent injury on the part of the defendant company to his wagon. The evidence on the question of negligence is very conflicting, and were there nothing else in the case, we would not feel justified in reversing the judgment. But on the redirect examination of the plaintiff he was allowed to testify, against defendant’s objection and exception, to a conversation between himself and one of the defendant’s drivers, relating not only to matters which occurred at the time of the accident, but to what took place a considerable time afterwards, and also as to what would have happened had he been the driver instead of the one who was actually driving. We think this was error. The conversation was in no sense a part of the res gestee. “ The res gestee, speaking generally, was the accident; these declarations were no part of that, were not made at the same time or so nearly contemporaneous with it as to characterize it or throw light upon it; they are purely narrative, giving an account of a transaction not partly past, but wholly past’” (Wardele v. New York Cent. & H. R. Co., 95 N. Y. 278; Sherman v. Delaware, L. & W. R. Co., 106 N. Y. 546).

For this error the judgment must be reversed and a new trial ordered, with costs to appellant to abide the event.

Bischoff, J., concurred.

Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to appellant to abide event.