Opinion ID: 1531328
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: admissibility of evidence pertaining to a survey.

Text: The appellees produced as a witness Mr. Louis Evans, a surveyor who was in the employ of a registered surveyor, Mr. Vernon C. Lutz. Mr. Evans was permitted to introduce into evidence and to testify with regard to a plat prepared by Mr. Lutz's office and also with regard to field notes of a survey upon which the plat was based. The witness himself had not made the plat nor had he participated in making the actual survey. The plat was authenticated by the signature of Mr. Lutz, which Mr. Evans identified. Mr. Lutz's absence was due to illness. The chief surveyor in charge of the party which made the survey, who was the individual who made the field notes, was also unavailable as a witness because he had moved out of the State. The witness had been engaged in surveying work for thirteen years and had been in the employ of Mr. Lutz for four years. He testified that the survey had been made by individuals employed by Mr. Lutz's office, that the field notes were made in the ordinary course of business, that the plat was prepared by being computed and plotted from the field notes, and that the plat was prepared under the supervision of Mr. Lutz and was signed by him. We think that the witness was sufficiently qualified as an expert to interpret the plat and the field notes. He met the test stated in Refrigerating Co. v. Kreiner, 109 Md. 361, 71 A. 1066, where the Court stated: It must be shown that the witness possesses such intelligence and such familiarity with the subject as in the sound discretion of the court will enable him to express a well-informed opinion in regard thereto. See also Wightman v. Campbell, 217 N.Y. 479, 112 N.E. 184, in which the appellant objected to the admissibility of the testimony of a surveyor who testified how he had located certain lines with the aid of field notes made in the year 1851 by a surveyor then deceased who had surveyed the property. The Court said: Field book entries made by a deceased surveyor for the purpose of a survey on which he was professionally employed, are admissible in evidence as being made in the discharge of professional duty.    If the proper foundation had been laid for the introduction of the notes in evidence, as easily might have been done by showing that they were made within the scope of professional employment, and the notes put into evidence, the witness, himself a surveyor and competent to interpret them, could have testified therefrom as to the location of boundary lines of the Taylor farm and the evidence would have been entirely proper. The records from which Mr. Evans testified were shown to have been made or kept in the regular course of a business or profession, and as such they were admissible as evidence under Code (1951), Article 35, Section 68. Bethlehem-Sparrows Point Shipyards, Inc. v. Scherpenisse, 187 Md. 375, 50 A.2d 256; Frush v. Brooks, 204 Md. 315, 104 A.2d 624; Shirks Motor Express v. Oxenham, 204 Md. 626, 106 A.2d 46.