Opinion ID: 2173725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of Civil Complaint and Interrogatories

Text: At trial, defense counsel sought to question Mahar on the substance of his complaint and his answers to defendant's interrogatories in a civil suit in which Mahar sought damages from defendant for the injuries sustained in the shooting. The defense's purpose was apparently to elicit from Mahar, for purposes of impeachment, both the fact that the complaint alleged, in the alternative, that defendant had negligently handled [the] firearm, [2] and the fact that Mahar had denied in his answers to the interrogatories any knowledge of who had shot him. The State, however, raised a timely objection on the grounds that the pleadings and interrogatories in the civil action were irrelevant to the criminal action. At least partially agreeing, the presiding justice precluded defense counsel from eliciting testimony on any aspect of the civil action, save certain answers by Mahar to the interrogatories. We note at the outset that defendant has failed to provide us on appeal with a copy of either the complaint or the interrogatories and their corresponding responses. Such an omission severely hampers our review of the issues attempted to be raised for appellate review. See State v. Lang, Me., 396 A.2d 1012 (1979); State v. Woodward, Me., 383 A.2d 661, 663 n. 2 (1978). In any event, we see no error in the trial justice's ruling. The fact (which we assume without having seen the civil complaint) that Mahar's attorney in that initial pleading based his civil claim on three alternative grounds, one of which (negligence) would not support criminal liability, was, at best, of dubious relevance. Cf. McCormick v. Kopmann, 23 Ill.App.2d 189, 203, 161 N.E.2d 720, 729 (1959) (alternative pleadings not admissible as admissions against interest). Rule 8(e)(2), M.R.Civ.P., permits alternative pleading, and any careful civil lawyer would include a negligence claim as well as one for an intentional tort, in order to protect his client against development at trial of the evidence along a line different from the facts as related to him by his client. In the related criminal case, no particular inference can be drawn from what any civil lawyer would plead as a matter of course. In the particular circumstances with which he was presented, the trial justice acted within the scope of his permissible discretion in ruling the civil complaint irrelevant. See State v. Morton, Me., 397 A.2d 171 (1979); State v. Gagne, Me., 362 A.2d 166, 170 (1976). Defense counsel was permitted to examine Mahar in regard to his sworn answers to the interrogatories, and defendant's only complaint on appeal is that the interrogatories themselves were not also admitted. Nothing in the record before us suggests that each answer standing alone was not entirely intelligible without reference to the corresponding interrogatory, and the presiding justice committed no error in excluding anything beyond the answers sworn to by the witness Mahar.