Court Opinion

ID: 9584610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:50:40.141695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:25.998303
License: Public Domain

Lewis, Justice
(dissenting).
The opinion of Justice Brailsford reverses the judgment of the lower Court on the ground that the post accident *93statements of the employee driver of the truck were inadmissible in evidence against the employer. I think the statements of the employee, made under the circumstances here, were properly admitted in evidence by the lower Court and, therefore, respectfully dissent.
The driver of the truck was employed to operate a dump truck on short hauls from the mixing plant of the employer to the work site. While so engaged, a collision occurred between the truck and another vehicle. The driver of the other vehicle was injured and was taken to the hospital. A State Highway patrolman was summoned and arrived about 30 minutes after the wreck. The vehicles had not been moved and the driver of the defendant’s truck was still at the scene, when the patrolman arrived. In the investigation of the accident, the patrolman had a conversation with defendant’s driver in which he told the officer his version of how the wreck occurred. On the trial of the case, the officer was permitted to testify, over objection, as to the statements made to him at the scene by the driver. The admissibility of the testimony of the officer, as to the statements made to him by the truck driver, is in issue.
I agree that the admissibility of the testimony in question cannot soundly rest upon the res gestae rule. However, the testimony here is admissible, in my opinion, as statements made by the employee in the course of exercising the authority placed upon him by his employer. As stated in 20 Am. Jur. 505, Section 596:
“There is a general rule that whatever is said by an agent, during the course of his duties and within the scope of his authority, relative to business contemplated by the agency in which he is then engaged is in legal intendment said by his principal and is admissible in evidence against such principal.”
The same principle is thus stated in 4 Wigmore on Evidence 119, Section 1078:
“He who sets another person to do an act in his stead as agent is chargeable in substantive law by such acts as are *94done under that authority; so too, properly enough, admissions made by the agent in the course of exercising that authority have the same testimonial value to discredit the party’s present claim as if stated by the party himself.”
The question of the admissibility of such testimony therefore turns upon the scope of the authority of the agent or employee at the time. The inquiry here is whether the driver in making the statements at the scene of the collision was acting in the course of his employment.
In my opinion, the statements of the driver were admissible in evidence under the authority of such prior decisions of our Court as Price v. American Agricultural Chemical Co., 173 S. C. 518, 176 S. E. 352; Snipes v. Augusta-Aiken Railway, 151 S. C. 391, 149 S. E. 111; and Williams v. Western Union Telegraph Company, 138 S. C. 281, 136 S. E. 218.
While these decisions refer to the admissibility of the statements of the agent as a part of the res gestae, in reality, the statements were admitted as declarations or admissions of the agent in the course of his employment. All of the foregoing cases involved tort liability and in all of them the statements of the agent were held admissible, although none were made at a time when they could be considered as the spontaneous utterances of the witnesses, and the court so recognized. They were bottomed on the principle that, when the statements were made, they constituted declarations of the agent, as stated in the Snipes case, “when the matter in question is still pending within the jurisdiction of the agent”. Similarly, in the Price case the statements were held to have been made when “the transaction in which the boy had been killed had not completely ended; there was pending still something to be done, the removal of the dead body, and the giving of a true account of the manner in which the death had occurred to those who were entitled to receive the information”. In the Williams case, it was stated: “We prefer to adopt the view that so long as anything remains to be *95done, the statements of the agent are competent, if made within the scope of his agency.”
These decisions all involved statements made by the agents after the occurrence under inquiry and related to the manner of its occurrence, directly aifecting the liability of the principal. The statements were held to have been made within the course of the employment.
In this case, the driver was placed in charge of the truck of the employer, charged with the duty of operating it upon the highways. When the wreck occurred, the employment of the driver did not cease at that moment, nor did his duties end. He was the representative of his employer on the scene. He was in charge of the truck and responsible for the performance of such duties and obligations there as were imposed by his employment and the law. Paraphrasing the Price case, when the wreck was over the transaction had not completely ended; there was something else to be done, the removal of the truck from the scene, and the giving of a true account of the manner in which the wreck had occurred to those entitled to receive the information.
There can be no doubt that the driver had the power to make his employer liable by the manner in which he operated the vehicle. The truck was placed in the sole charge of the driver to operate. It is unrealistic, to say the least, to hold that the driver was the agent of the employer for every purpose in connection with the operation of the vehicle, except to truthfully relate the manner in which he operated it. As stated in Martin v. Savage Truck Line, D. C., 121 F. Supp. 417, 419:
“To say, in these circumstances, that the owner of a motor truck may constitute a person his agent for the purpose of the operation of such truck over public streets and highways, and to say at the same time that such operator is no longer the agent of such owner when an accident occurs, for the purpose of truthfully relating the facts concerning the occurrence to an investigating police officer on the scene *96shortly thereafter, seems to me to erect an untenable fiction, neither contemplated by the parties nor sanctioned by public policy. It is almost like saying that a statement against interest in the instant case could only have been made had the truck been operated by an officer or the board of directors of the Corporation owning the truck; and trucks are not operated that way.”
The opinion of Justice Brailsford correctly sets forth the views of the text writers and the courts in other jursdictions upon the admissibility of such testimony. Repetition of such is unnecessary here. I consider, however, the question to be closed in this jurisdiction by our prior decisions.
The judgment of the lower Court should be affirmed.