Court Opinion

ID: 9418269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:18:15.009236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:59.639220
License: Public Domain

*680Mr. Justice Hughes,
with whom
Mr. Justice Day concurred, dissenting.
I am unable to agree to the approval of the ruling which excluded the physicians’ testimony. It should be supposed that it was the • legislative intent to protect the patient in preserving secrecy with respect to his ailments and not to give him a monopoly of testimony as to his condition while under treatment. Here, not only did the plaintiff introduce the evidence of his nurse, describing in detail his bodily injuries and the medical treatment, but the plaintiff offered himself as a witness and voluntarily testified as to his bodily condition. His testimony covered the time during which he was under the physician’s examination, and it was upon this testimony that he sought to have the extent of his injuries determined by the jury and damages awarded accordingly. To permit him, while thus disclosing his physical disorders, to claim a privilege in order to protect himself from contradiction by his physician as to the same matter, would be, as it seems to me, so inconsistent with the proper administration of justice that we are not at liberty to find a warrant for this procedure in the statute unless its language prohibits any other construction. [See Hunt v. Blackburn, 128 U. S. 464, 470; Epstein v. Railroad, 250 Missouri, 1, 25; Roeser v. Pease, 37 Oklahoma, 222, 227; Forrest v. Portland Ry. L. & P. Co., 64 Oregon, 240; Capron v. Douglass, 193 N. Y. 11; 4 Wigmore on Evidence, § 2389 (2).]
As I read the Arizona statute it was framed not to accomplish, but to prevent, such a result. We have not been referred to any construction of it by either the territorial or state court, and we must construe it for ourselves. To my mind, its meaning is that if the.patient voluntarily testifies as to his physical condition at the time of the examination, he cannot shut out his physician’s testimony as to the same subject. To reach the contrary *681conclusion, emphasis is placed on the words 'such communications’ in the proviso, and it is insisted that the proviso was to apply only if the plaintiff testifies as to what he told the physician. I think that this is altogether too narrow. When the patient submits himself to an examination, he as truly communicates his condition to the physician as if he tells him in words. Although the patient were dumb, his submission to inspection in order that he might be treated would be none the less a communication of what is thus made known. That is the very ground of the privilege. Nor does the fact that the statute, with unnecessary diffuseness, refers in the sentence defining the privilege to 'any communication’ or 'any knowledge obtained by personal examination’ limit the natural meaning of the proviso. In saying that' if a person offer himself as a witness and voluntarily testify with reference to such communications,’ it is to be deemed ‘a consent ’ to the physician’s testifying, the proviso may be, and I think should be, taken to embrace implied as well as express communications. I can find no reasonable basis for a distinction. It is said that the plaintiff may not know what the physician has observed or what testimony he may give. But when the plaintiff testifies he invites analysis and contradiction, and in contemplation of law he asks to have his statement judged by what is shown to be the truth of the matter. If the plaintiff testifies as to what he told the physician, it is conceded that the physician may be examined, and the obvious reason is that the plaintiff is not to be permitted to insist upon his privilege as to what he himself is disclosing. This is the policy of the statute — and it governs equally, as I read it, when the plaintiff testifies as to his physical condition at the time he submits himself to the physician’s examination. The words 'such communications’ are broad enough to cover all communications for the purpose of treatment, whether by utterance or by what is usually more revealing — the *682yielding of one’s body to the scrutiny of the practitioner. To repeat, it seems to me that the statute was intended to make it impossible for the plaintiff to claim the privilege ' when he himself has testified as to the subject of it.
As in this view competent, and presumably important, evidence was excluded, I think that the judgment should be reversed.
I am authorized to say that Mk. Justice Day concurs in this dissent.