Case Name: William A. Kirkham, Appellant, v. The Leavenworth Light, Heat and Power Company, Appellee
Court: Kansas Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Kansas
Decision Date: 1918-12-07
Citations: 103 Kan. 862
Docket Number: No. 21,783
Parties: William A. Kirkham, Appellant, v. The Leavenworth Light, Heat and Power Company, Appellee.
Judges: 
Reporter: Kansas Reports
Volume: 103
Pages: 862–865

Head Matter:
No. 21,783.
William A. Kirkham, Appellant, v. The Leavenworth Light, Heat and Power Company, Appellee.
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.
Negligence — Fire Caused by Electric Meter — Opinion Evidence — Judicial Discretion. A judgment will not necessarily be reversed for the . exclusion of opinion evidence sought to be introduced to show that a fire in a building- had started at a certain place and had been caused. by an electric meter; the admission or exclusion of such evidence being largely within the discretion of the trial court.
Appeal from Leavenworth district court; James H. Wendorff, judge.
Opinion filed December 7, 1918.
Affirmed.
W. W. Hooper, and B. F. Endres, both of Leavenworth, for the appellant.
Floyd E. Harper, of Leavenworth, for the appellee.

Opinion:
The opinion of the court was delivered by
Marshall, J.:
The plaintiff appeals from a judgment against him in an action brought to recover damages caused by a fire alleged to have been started by the defendant's, negligence. The petition alleged that the plaintiff conducted a jewelry business in a building in Leavenworth; that the de fendant there negligently maintained a defective electric meter, or a meter that had been defectively installed; and that this defect started the fire and caused the plaintiffs damage. The plaintiff sought to prove, by the chief of the fire department of Leavenworth, by men who were working for the plaintiff, and by an electrician of eighteen or twenty years' experience, that the fire started at a certain place in the building and was caused by the meter. Some of those witnesses saw the fire, and all of them saw the building after the fire- had been extinguished. They were not permitted to give their opinions.' The plaintiff complains .of the exclusion of that evidence.
There is a field of the law of evidence in which expert opinions are clearly competent, and there is another, but larger, field in which such opinions are clearly incompetent. The latter is the general rule; the former is an exception. Between these two there is a smaller field in which expert opinion evidence may or may not be competent, and its admission is often a question to be determined by the sound discretion of the trial court. (Davis v. United States, 165 U. S. 373, 377; Manufacturers' Accident Indemnity Co. v. Dorgan, 58 Fed. 945, 948; Gundlach v. Schott, 192 Ill. 509, 514; Dashiell v. Griffith, 84 Md. 363, 378; Martin v. Franklin Fire Insurance Co., 42 N. J. L. 46; Cornell v. The State, 104 Wis. 527, 537; Allen v. Voje, 114 Wis. 1, 13.)
This case comes within the field last mentioned, and, because of that fact, this court cannot say that there was prejudicial error in excluding the evidence offered. The conditions that existed during the fire and thereafter could have been described by the witnesses, and from the evidence of those witnesses the jury could have determined where and how the fire started.
The judgment is affirmed.