Title: Todd v. Watts
Citation: 152 S.E.2d 448, 269 N.C. 417
Docket Number: 692
State: north-carolina
Issuer: north-carolina Supreme Court
Date: February 3, 1967

152 S.E.2d 448 (1967) 269 N.C. 417 Lois TODD, By Her Next Friend, William Kelly Todd v. Earl Keith WATTS and Ethel Watts. No. 692. Supreme Court of North Carolina. February 3, 1967. *450 Williamson &amp; Walton, Whiteville, for plaintiff. Marshall &amp; Williams, Wilmington, for defendants. SHARP, Justice. Plaintiff's evidence was ample to overcome both defendants' motions for nonsuit. 3 Strong, N.C.Index, Negligence § 8 (1960). There must, however, be a new trial for errors in the admission of evidence. The court overruled defendants' objections to the following questions, which plaintiff's counsel asked Dr. Piggott, and denied defendants' motions to strike the answers elicited: Since it is the jury's province to find the facts, the data upon which an expert witness bases his opinion must be presented to the jury in accordance with established rules of evidence. Stansbury, N.C.Evidence § 136 (2d Ed.1963). "It is well settled in the law of evidence that a physician or surgeon may express his opinion as to the cause of the physical condition of a person if his opinion is based either upon facts within his personal knowledge, or upon an assumed state of facts supported by evidence and recited in a hypothetical question." Spivey v. Newman, 232 N.C. 281, 284, 59 S.E.2d 844, 847. A witness is not permitted to base an opinion upon facts of which he has no knowledge. Robbins v. C. W. Myers Trading Post, Inc., 251 N.C. 663, 111 S.E.2d 884. This, however, is what Dr. Piggott purported to do. He had no personal knowledge that plaintiff was involved in an automobile accident on October 27, 1962, or, if she was, that she sustained any injuries in the accident. Yet, he stated to the jury as a fact that, in the accident in suit, plaintiff had sustained, inter alia, "wrenching and contusion injuries of the low back with persistent chronic low back pain"; that she had "continuing lumbo sacral strain and persistent headaches as a result of her automobile accident"; and that her congenital spinal defects could "have been aggravated by an injury or blow she received in this automobile accident." Whether plaintiff had persistent headaches and continuous backaches and, if so, whether the collision caused them, were crucial questions in the case. The doctor could not assume the cause or source of the symptoms which plaintiff reported to him and which he found five months after the accident in suit. His opinion as to the possible cause of these symptoms and their probable permanency, should have been elicited as the response to a properly phrased hypothetical question which included all material facts necessary to enable him to form a satisfactory opinion. Stansbury, N.C. Evidence § 137 (2d Ed.1963). New trial. PARKER, Chief Justice (dissenting). This action was commenced by the issuance of summons on 11 August 1964. The record shows that Dr. J. Burr Piggott, Jr., testified before the quoted part of his testimony in the majority opinion in substance, except when quoted: On 23 March 1963 he first saw plaintiff and made an examination of her in his office in South Carolina. He testified: In Penland v. Bird Coal Co., 246 N.C. 26, 97 S.E.2d 432, Johnson, J., writing for the Court said: The testimony of Dr. Piggott I have quoted above was admitted in evidence without objection by defendant. In my opinion, the testimony of Dr. Piggott, as quoted in the majority opinion, was competent and properly admitted in evidence. I do not agree with the majority that such testimony was inadmissible in evidence, and necessitates a new trial. To hold, as the majority opinion does, that Dr. Piggott's diagnosis and opinion are inadmissible in evidence because based in part on statements given to him in 1963 by plaintiff when she was examined by him for the purpose of rendering to her medical assistance, is unpractical, because a doctor customarily relies upon such statements made to him by a patient in the practice of his profession, and such a holding defies the usual processes of medical thought. I vote to sustain the verdict and judgment below.