Court Opinion

ID: 9643932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:43:51.767681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:25.062047
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
CHASE, Justice.
In its Motion for Rehearing Appellant charges we erred in concluding there was sufficient evidence to establish that General Motors had an agency in the county of suit.
In finding such agency we relied upon a provision in a contract between General Motors Corporation and Carlisle Chevrolet Company in which General Motors delegated the final inspection of the vehicle to Carlisle Chevrolet. Appellant contends that this contract was not properly before the court as admissible evidence because it was “simply an attachment to Carlisle Chevrolet Company’s responses to Interrogatories directed to Carlisle by plaintiff ... ”, and Rule 168 prohibits the use of an answer to *649an interrogatory by one party against another party. This would be true if the contract in question were truly an answer to an interrogatory.
Interrogatory Number 11 in Plaintiff’s first interrogatories to Carlisle Chevrolet Company read as follows: “Attach a copy of the contract that exists between Carlisle Chevrolet and General Motors Corporation.” This is not an interrogatory as envisioned in Rule 168, but a request for the production of a document as envisioned in Rule 167. Rule 167, the only rule under which a party can be required to produce a document, contains no prohibition against the use of a document so produced, but leaves its admissibility to the general rules of evidence. Appellant’s only objection to the introduction of the contract into evidence was based upon the prohibition set forth in Rule 168 prohibiting the use of an “answer to an interrogatory” by one party against the other. There being no answer to an interrogatory, but merely the production of a document under Rule 167, the contract was properly before the court to be considered for any purpose.
We overrule Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing.
McDONALD, C. J., not participating.