Opinion ID: 2168065
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admissibility of Patricia Mack Statement.

Text: During the cross-examination by appellants' counsel Patricia Mack was shown a written statement purporting to give her version of the accident. The statement consisted of one page and a portion of a second page, both of which were subscribed Patricia Mack and witnessed by one Zimmerman. The statement was dated June 29, 1959. Miss Mack was asked if the signatures were hers; she admitted they were. She was then asked this question and gave this answer thereto:  Q. Now, I ask you, Miss Mack, if it is not true that on the 29th day of June, 1959, you made the following statement to Mr. John P. Zimmerman, who wrote it down and asked you to read this and sign it, did you not at that time tell him your name was Patricia Mack? A. I don't remember reading this, I don't remember this at all. The trial court then sustained an objection to appellants' counsel reading from this statement in questioning the witness. At the conclusion of the cross-examination appellants' counsel offered the statement in evidence, but the trial court excluded it. Miss Mack was confined in a hospital at the time the statement was signed by her and she testified that while in the hospital she had been given sedatives for pain. Her mother, Mrs. Mack, during the course of the trial, testified that on the afternoon of June 29, 1959, an insurance man (referring to Zimmerman) had come to the hospital and had gone into Patricia's room. Mrs. Mack remained in the waiting room. Mrs. Mack further testified that after he left she asked Patricia whether she had given him a statement and Patricia replied, No. Mrs. Mack further stated that Patricia had been given sedatives that afternoon. The hospital records, however, disclosed that the administration of sedatives had taken place before 8:15 o'clock that morning and not in the afternoon. At 11 in the morning the nurse had noted that Patricia was writing letters, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon she was visiting, and at 3 o'clock the notation was, comfortable day. The excluded statement contradicted Patricia Mack's testimony given at the trial. At the trial she testified that when she saw Taft's car, after glancing at the radio tower, there were no pedestrians then crossing the highway. In the statement, however, she stated that the car had stopped for some pedestrians. The admissibility of the statement is governed by Jensen v. Heritage Mut. Ins. Co. (1964), 23 Wis. (2d) 344, 352, 127 N. W. (2d) 228. Patricia Mack's testimony that the two signatures on the statement were hers constituted sufficient authentication to entitle the statement to be admitted. Her testimony that she could not recall giving or reading the statement, and the conflicting evidence as to whether she was under sedatives at the time she signed it, go to the weight to be accorded the statement, not its admissibility. It was, therefore, error to have excluded the statement.