Opinion ID: 2208977
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Business Records Exception/Medical Tests

Text: Appellant contends that it was error to admit evidence of his positive test result for gonorrhea under the business records exception to the hearsay rule. We cannot agree. This Court has previously held generally that medical opinions and diagnoses are not admissible as business records, but instead required live testimony by a qualified medical expert. See e.g., Commonwealth v. Hemingway, 369 Pa.Super. 112, 534 A.2d 1104 (1987). However, that general rule does not extend to records of the results of standard tests for the presence of spermatozoa in the victim's vagina or for alcohol in a defendant's blood. See Commonwealth v. Karch, 349 Pa.Super. 227, 502 A.2d 1359 (1986); Commonwealth v. Seville, 266 Pa.Super. 587, 405 A.2d 1262 (1979). We find standard gonorrhea tests to be sufficiently similar to standard spermatozoa and alcohol tests to fall within the latter precedent, and outside the general rule. Appellant argues further that even if business records of such standard tests were admissible generally, they should not be here, because the test was performed by an outside testing lab rather than by a prison employee on-site. Appellant seeks to analogize the testing lab to a mere bystander whose information could not properly become part of an admissible business record. Cf. Hass v. Kasnot, 371 Pa. 580, 92 A.2d 171 (1952). The analogy, however, is a false one. Far from being a mere bystander, the testing lab was an independent contractor plainly providing the information included in the business record in the ordinary course of the business relationship. Much information in modern business records may be supplied by suppliers or purchasers, principal contractors or sub-contractors or other business people acting in the inter-dependent, information oriented context of modern business. It is the business purpose of the record, rather than the employee status of the source, which renders such hearsay evidence specially reliable. Hence, we see no reason to treat an off-site venereal disease blood test results differently than on-site results. See Binder, Hearsay Handbook, § 805, at 150-52 (1983 & 1989 supp.) (collecting cases involving non-employee generated business records). Hence, we reject appellant's challenge to the admissibility of the business records evidence of the gonorrhea test results.