Opinion ID: 1750025
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Exclusion of Sid McMath's Testimony

Text: In his sixth point on appeal, Dodson argues that the trial court improperly excluded Sid McMath's testimony regarding a summary of Allstate's voluminous records submitted at trial. Allstate argues that the trial court did not err in excluding the testimony of McMath on various issues involving conclusions as to issues of law, matters not within his realm of expertise, and matters that had already been presented through various other witnesses. While Dodson characterizes this as an exclusion of McMath's testimony, in actuality Dodson is arguing that the trial court erred in failing to admit the summary prepared by Attorney Hargis and adopted and verified by McMath. As Dodson's abstract reveals, the trial court, after hearing objections by the defense that McMath was not qualified as an expert on issues of insurance claims handling, overruled the objection and designated McMath as an expert in this area. As such, the trial court did not exclude McMath's testimony. However, when Hargis attempted to question McMath about a summary he and Hargis, prepared on over 6,000 pages of documents in Allstate's claims manuals, the defense objected, arguing that the summary was hearsay because it was prepared by Hargis instead of McMath. McMath acknowledged that Hargis prepared the summary but that he, McMath, verified the summary and adopted it. The trial court, however, sustained the defense's objection as to hearsay and ruled that the summary could not be admitted into evidence and that McMath could not testify about its contents. The trial court noted that the over 6,000 pages of documents were part of the record and that the documents had already been testified about. Again, admission of evidence is at the discretion of the trial court, and this court will not reverse absent an abuse of that discretion or absent a showing of prejudice. O'Fallon, supra ; Jackson, supra . Rule 1006 of the Arkansas Rules of Evidence, which controls the admissibility of summaries, provides: The contents of voluminous writings, recordings, or photographs which cannot conveniently be examined in court may be presented in the form of a chart, summary, or calculation. The originals, or duplicates, shall be made available for examination or copying, or both, by other parties at a reasonable time and place. The court may order that they be produced in court. As this rule indicates, the court may accept a summary, but is not bound to under the rule. This court has addressed Rule 1006 in two cases. In Ward v. Gerald E. Prince, Const., Inc., 293 Ark. 59, 732 S.W.2d 163 (1987), the court upheld the trial court's acceptance of a summary of an accounting for construction costs offered by the construction company in its claim to recover costs for a project. On appeal, appellant claimed it was error to accept the summary. This court stated: Appellant argues that while no Arkansas case has addressed Rule 1006 as yet, other jurisdictions and Arkansas decisions rendered prior to the adoption of the rule support the conclusion that the original underlying documents of a summary must be (1) shown to be admissible and (2) made available in court in order to assure the accuracy of the summary and to allow for effective cross-examination. He further urges this court to adopt the procedure of our sister state, Missouri, which requires that, in order to introduce a summary of records, a party must give notice of such intention within a reasonable time prior to actual use of the summary. See Union Electric Co. v. Mansion House Redevelopment Co., 494 S.W.2d 309 (Mo.1973). Rule 1006 does not require that a party notify an opposing party that he intends to introduce a summary. Instead, it merely mandates the originals, or duplicates, which are underlying documents of a summary, be made available for examination or copying or both, by other parties at a reasonable time and place. See Square Liner 360-Degrees, Inc. v. Chisum, 691 F.2d 362 (8th Cir. 1982). In addition, the rule allows the trial court discretion to order those documents be produced in court. Our court ordered production of such documents in Mhoon v. State, 277 Ark. 341, 642 S.W.2d 292 (1982). There, the trial court directed the state, during trial, to produce documents located in the Washington county collector's office, after permitting an auditor to testify concerning his summary of findings extracted from those documents. Although the trial court offered defendant's counsel a continuance to afford him an opportunity to examine the documents, counsel declined the offer. This court volunteered approval of the manner in which the trial court handled the matter. Ward, 293 Ark. at 61, 732 S.W.2d 163. As noted in Ward , this court in Mhoon v. State also allowed an auditor to testify regarding his summary of documents from the Washington County collector's office. In these two cases, the preparer of the summary testified as to its contents. Here, however, McMath did not prepare the summary, but instead testified that he verified Hargis's summary against the original records. The trial court determined that this was hearsay evidence, that the documents had already been admitted into evidence, and, further, that Dodson's expert had already testified about the documents. We agree and hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to allow McMath to testify regarding the contents of a summary that he did not prepare himself as being cumulative and, further, that Dodson has not shown that he was prejudiced by the exclusion of the summary.