Court Opinion

ID: 9448633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:41:41.832532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:30.684772
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the judgment of reversal and in the over-all conclusions of Judge WATERMAN’S careful and reasoned opinion. But in my judgment the statute 28 U.S.C. § 1732 not merely permits, but requires, that the result be reached more directly and in less labored fashion. For the distinguished and scholarly proponents of this legislation foresaw this type of problem and provided the answer in the statute itself, that “[a] 11 other circumstances of the making of such writing or record, including lack of personal knowledge by the entrant or maker, may be shown to affect its weight, but such circumstances shall not affect its admissibility.” [Italics added.] Here seems clearly a case for the application of this explicit principle. What basis has a trial judge for holding a regular report such as is here involved, made by a person not a party to the litigation, to be inadmissible? Presumably he is acting because he thinks it untrustworthy within the meaning of the statutory gloss suggested in Central R. Co. v. Jules S. Sottnek Co., 2 Cir., 258 F.2d 85, certiorari denied 359 U.S. 913, 79 S.Ct. 588, 3 L.Ed.2d 574, and pressed still further in Puggioni v. Luckenbach S.S. Co., 2 Cir., 286 F.2d 340. But I submit that the statute gives him no such power.
It is true that where one accused of active negligence made a statement exculpating himself, for use in litigation, the Supreme Court declined to hold this a report made in the ordinary course of business. Palmer v. Hoffman, 318 U.S. 109, 63 S.Ct. 477, 87 L.Ed. 645, 144 A.L. R. 719. But as we have had occasion to point out, this was a wholly exceptional case and should not be taken as giving the judge general power to exclude entries he questions and thus substantially to destroy the value and the convenience of this remedial statute. Our discussions and holdings in Pekelis v. Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., 2 Cir., 187 F.2d 122, 23 A.L.R.2d 1349, certiorari denied Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. v. Pekelis, 341 U.S. 951, 71 S.Ct. 1020, 95 L.Ed. 1374, and Korte v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 2 Cir., 191 F.2d 86, certiorari denied New York, N. H. & H. R. Co. v. Korte, 342 U.S. 868, 72 S.Ct. 108, 96 L.Ed. 652, fully sustain this conclusion. I do not feel that we can properly support the statutory glosses, advanced more or less as dicta, in the Central R. Co. and Puggioni cases cited above.