Court Opinion

ID: 9742658
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:17:31.94178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:33.932723
License: Public Domain

GORDON, J.
(concurring). I believe that the excluded testimony should have been received into evidence as an admission against interest. Mrs. Rudzinski proposed to testi*250fy that she heard the usher make the following statement to the janitor: “Now you come when it’s too late, after someone falls. Why didn’t you come a half hour ago when I called you?” In my opinion, this was an admission against interest made by an agent on a topic which was within the scope of his duties.
If the statement had been made by the principal himself, it would have met the classic requirements of an admission against interest and would have been treated as an exception to the hearsay rule. Because the defendant corporation can act and speak only through its agents, it should bear the burden of an admission which relates to its agent’s duties. In a decision being filed at the same time as that in the instant case, we hold that a corporation, pursuant to a statute, may be found criminally liable for the unauthorized acts of its agents. State v. Dried Milk Products Co-op., post, pp. 357, 361, 114 N. W. (2d) 412. Said the court:
“But a corporation acts of necessity through its agents whose acts within the scope of the agent’s authority are the acts of the corporation, both for the imposition of civil and criminal liability. Vulcan Last Co. v. State (1928), 194 Wis. 636, 217 N. W. 412.”
Thus, an employer may be criminally liable for the unauthorized acts of its agents; it would seem easier to bind the employer with civil responsibility for the unauthorized statements of its agents under the doctrine of respondeat superior.
We exclude hearsay as evidence because we doubt its inherent trustworthiness, but we make an exception when such hearsay is in the nature of an admission against interest. The raison d’etre for this exception to the hearsay rule is that trustworthiness surrounds admissions against interest. The same considerations which give credibility to the statement against interest on the part of a principal should apply to his employee. Loyalty to an employer’s interests is the rule, rather than the exception.
*251The test of admissibility should not rest on whether the principal gave the agent authority to make declarations. No sensible employer would authorize his employee to make damaging statements. The right to speak on a given topic must arise out of the nature of the employee’s duties. The errand boy should not be able to bind the corporation with a statement about the issuance of treasury stock, but a truck driver should be able to bind his employer with an admission regarding his careless driving. Similarly, an usher should be able to commit his employer with an observation about a slippery spot on the lobby floor.
It is enough to show the existence of the employment and the general nature of the employee’s work. There may be cases where a further foundation will be needed to develop that the utterances are fairly within the employee’s scope of authority. Surely there can be little doubt that a theater usher’s range of discussion properly includes the cleanup of a wet lobby floor.
The majority opinion points out that it was not part of the usher’s duties “to direct the work of the janitors.” The nature of the usher’s responsibilities would have been relevant in determining whether the admission was made within the scope of his duties; however, it is noted that in the instant case, the evidence concerning the usher’s duties was advanced long after the trial court had rejected the plaintiff’s proposed testimony. Obviously, it did not play a part in the trial judge’s ruling on this question.
Even if the testimony limiting the usher’s duties had been received beforehand, it would not of itself be decisive of the admissibility of the admissions against interest. The scope of an agent’s actions is not controlled by the exact terms of his employment contract. Is it realistic that any contract of employment between the theater and the usher would provide that the usher could or could not direct the work of the janitors? Furthermore, it is immaterial whether or not the *252usher could call upon the janitor, because the statement contains an admission of knowledge of an unsafe condition in the theater lobby and should have been received to reflect that knowledge.
That this usher was entitled to heed the state of the lobby floor is inherent in the majority’s opinion; they have reversed because the wet spots were “in plain view of this usher and the jury would be warranted in concluding that he should have seen them.” In other words, the jury could infer the corporation’s knowledge from the mere presence of the usher, but the jury must be denied those oral statements of the usher which would prove the knowledge.
I am mindful of the Restatement’s view as set forth in 2 Agency (2d), pp. 6, 9, secs. 286, 287:
“286. In an action between the principal and a third person, statements of an agent to a third person are admissible in evidence against the principal to prove the truth of facts asserted in them as though made by the principal, if the agent was authorized to make the statement or was authorized to make, on the principal’s behalf, any statements concerning the subject matter.
“287. Statements by an agent to the principal or to another agent of the principal are not admissible against the principal as admissions; such statements may be admissible in evidence under other rules of evidence.”
I would reject the Restatement’s position as forthrightly as the author of the foregoing majority opinion did in Haumschild v. Continental Casualty Co. (1959), 7 Wis. (2d) 130, 95 N. W. (2d) 814. I recognize that there are express:ons in previous decisions of this court which support the majority’s position. Hamilton v. Reinemann (1940), 233 Wis. 572, 290 N. W. 194. I respectfully submit that they should be overruled with the same motivation for improvement of the law which we expressed in Bielski v. Schulze, ante, p. 1, 114 N. W. (2d) 105; McConville v. *253State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. (1962), 15 Wis. (2d) 374, 113 N. W. (2d) 14; and Kojis v. Doctors Hospital (1961), 12 Wis. (2d) 367, 107 N. W. (2d) 131, modified, 12 Wis. (2d) 373, 107 N. W. (2d) 292.
The Restatement’s rule excluding admissions made by an agent to a fellow agent is especially confounding. These admissions are said to be barred because they are statements which “the principal does not intend to be given to the world or to be considered as his statements.” In my opinion, the test is one of trustworthiness, and it is even less likely that an agent would misrepresent his employer’s interests to a fellow agent than he would to an outsider. If the declaration be an admission against interest it should be received when asserted to a stranger, and, a fortiori, when asserted to a coemployee in the presence of a stranger.
In 2 Fletcher, Cyc. Corp. (perm, ed.), p. 1049, sec. 747, ■the author states:
“ 'The declarations and admissions of subordinate corporate agents are binding upon a corporation only when made in connection with the particular business intrusted to them and such declarations must be incidental to the duties which they are intrusted to perform.’ ‘Were the rule otherwise, the fortune of every man would rest on the veracity of his errand boy.’ ”
In 4 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.), p. 119, sec. 1078, the author asserts the rule to be as follows:
“He who sets another person to do an act in his stead as agent is chargeable in substantive law by such acts as are done 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 therefore turns upon the scope of the authority.”
*254Professor Wigmore is quite caustic about the judicial exclusion of an agent’s admissions. For example, he discusses Rankin v. Brockton Public Market (1926), 257 Mass. 6, 153 N. E. 97, in which a customer in a store was hit on the head; the court excluded the saleslady’s admission that it was she who had tossed the item of store equipment which had struck the plaintiff because the saleslady “had no authority to bind the defendant.” At page 121, Professor Wig-more commented as follows:
“. . . yet she had authority to sell goods and make a profit for defendant; then why not an authority to say how she sold them? Such quibbles bring the law justly into contempt with laymen.”
Rule 63 (9) of the Uniform Rules of Evidence would likewise appear to contemplate the receipt of admissions by an agent:
“As against a party, a statement would be admissible if made by the declarant at the hearing if (a) the statement concerned a matter within the scope of an agency or employment of the declarant for the party and was made before the termination of such relationship . . . or (c) one of the issues between the party and the proponent of the evidence of the statement is a legal liability of the declarant and the statement tends to establish that liability.”
The text writer who has most precisely pinpointed the problem is Professor Charles T. McCormick. In his horn-book treatise on Evidence, p. 519, sec. 244, the author states:
“The evidence should be tested by its trustworthiness. . . . The agent is well informed about acts in the course of the business, his statements offered against the employer are normally against the employer’s interest, and while the employment continues, the employee is not likely to make such statements unless they are true. Accordingly, the commentators have advocated a widening of the common-law tests, such as is embodied in the Model Code provision which *255lets in the agent’s statement, if ‘the declaration concerned a matter within the scope’ of the declarant’s employment, ‘and was made before the termination of the agency or employment.’ Some of the recent cases, in result if not in theory, support this wider test. Its acceptance by courts generally seems expedient.”
Numerous courts have examined this question and have admitted the vicarious declarations. In Slifka v. Johnson (2d Cir. 1947), 161 Fed. (2d) 467, 469, Judge Augustus N. Hand said:
“It would be strange to have a rule of agency binding a principal to unauthorized acts of an agent, when done within the apparent scope of his authority, and yet to adopt a rule of evidence which would exclude statements naturally made in the course of the agency. Such a rigid view does not accord with the current broadening of the rules of evidence or with the spirit of contemporary remedial statutes.”
In Myrick v. Lloyd (1946), 158 Fla. 47, 27 So. (2d) 615, 616, the defendant’s agent, while driving the defendant’s car, struck a boy. As the agent was going to the hospital with the parents of the injured boy, he told them that the accident was his fault and not the fault of their son. The court held the statement of the agent admissible because it was made within the scope of his authority. After quoting Wigmore, the court said, at page 49:
“We recognize a conflict of authority on this question; however we have chosen the above as the more practical and liberal rule. . . . the statement had reference to matters occurring within the scope of his employment. When so acting the agent was acting for the principal who might have made such an admission himself against his own interest.”
In Arenson v. Skouras Theatres Corp. (1944), 131 N. J. L. 303, 36 Atl. (2d) 761, the plaintiff sued to recover for injuries incurred when he sat on a theater seat that was wet with a liquid containing a chemical that burned him. *256Testimony was offered at the trial with respect to admissions concerning the substance on the seat made by an usherette to the manager in the presence of the plaintiff. In holding that the testimony was admissible under the admissions exception to the hearsay rule, the court stated (p. 306) :
“Were the statements in question made by the agents of the defendant in the execution of their agency ? There seems no room for doubt that they were so made. The manager was clearly charged with the duty of operation and to see that acts of employees were not negligent. It is clear that the manager was conducting a transaction for the principal, an inquiry into an immediate occurrence that was in the execution of his duty, and that the answers of the girl to such queries of the manager form part of the act — the inquiry — which was being conducted for the benefit of the principal by its agent. The answers of the girl were as much part of the act as if the principal had propounded the same inquiry to the manager. Here each was an agent of the principal for certain duties and each was acting within the scope of the agency in asking and answering questions.”
In Whitaker v. Keogh (1944), 144 Neb. 790, 795, 14 N. W. (2d) 596, 600, the plaintiff offered to show that after the collision the defendant’s driver said, “Lady, I am sorry. I just saw you the instant I collided with you.” The court ruled that this was “not a question of res gestae” and went on to hold that “the evidence was properly receivable as an admission against interest.”
In Robinson v. Fort Dodge Limestone Co. (Iowa 1960), 106 N. W. (2d) 579, 584, the agent, one Underberg, testified that some frozen chunks had fallen off a pile and caused the injury. Over objection that the statement was inadmissible because the agent had no authority to make it, the court ruled that:
“Knowledge on the part of Underberg is knowledge of defendant. The statement of Underberg was admissible to *257show his knowledge of the condition of the limestone at or before the time of the injury.”
The testimony received in each of the above cases would have to be rejected if the Restatement rule were applied. I consider the Restatement rule especially unsound in that it would bind a principal with the statements of his employee to third persons only in the unrealistic situation in which the agent was authorized to make statements.
In conclusion, I would exclude the admissions of an agent when:
(a) He purports to speak on a subject beyond the scope of his duties or personal knowledge, or
(b) He is shown to have an animus against his principal which negatives the trustworthiness of his declaration, or
(c) His admission is made after his employment has been terminated.
There was no showing that the usher had any hostility toward his employer or had ceased to be an employee at the time of the admission. Because the topic of conversation was patently within an usher’s range of responsibilities, I would favor admission of Mrs. Rudzinski’s proffered testimony. Its weight and credibility would be left to the jury.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice FaiRchild joins in this concurring opinion.