Case ID: misc_31/html/0472-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Fanny C. Sweeny, Respondent, v. The Union Railway Company of New York City, Appellant.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term,
    May, 1900.)
    1. Negligence — Married woman cannot recover for medical attendance for injuries.
    A married woman, having no separate business, cannot recover the value of medical attendance upon her made necessary by persona! injuries caused by the negligence of a street railroad corporation.
    
      3. Same — Improper evidence of subsequent internal injuries.
    Where the accident is proved not to have injured her internally and she has since borne children, it is improper to admit testimony showing the present existence of injuries to the genital organs.
    Appeal from a determination of the General Term of the City Court of the city of New York, affirming a judgment of the Trial Term, rendered on the verdict of a jury in favor of the plaintiff.
    John R. Halsey, for appellant.
    Eugene H. Pomeroy, for respondent.
   Per Curiam.

This is an action for damages for injuries alleged to have been caused by the defendant’s negligence. The plaintiff is a married woman, living with her husband, and, so far as appears not possessed of any private means, or engaged in any separate business. One of her witnesses was the physician who attended her after her accident, who was permitted to testify, against the defendant’s objection and exception, as to the value of his services and the amount he was paid. This evidence was clearly incompetent. Becker v. Albany R. Co., 35 App. Div. 46. A second physician was called and permitted to testify as to the physical condition of the plaintiff on a date more than two years after the accident. In the meantime she had given birth to two children. The first physician who attended her found no internal injuries whatever. The second was permitted to testify, against the defendant’s objection, as to certain internal injuries to the genital organs, which were wholly unconnected, so far as the evidence showed, with the accident two years before, but which might naturally have resulted from one or the other of the two intervening confinements. Such evidence had no place in the case, and must be presumed to have influenced the jury in finding the very liberal verdict which they rendered.

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

Present: Tbuax, P. J., Scott and Dugbo, JJ.

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