Court Opinion

ID: 9848802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:27:45.527019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:47.725200
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree with all that is said in the opinion. However, regarding Division 1, I wish to add a focus on OCGA § 24-3-2 because the Fletcher case does not make the point clear enough. Fletcher v. Fletcher, 242 Ga. 158 (5) (249 SE2d 530) (1978) involved a multiple use of the evidence. It was offered not only to show knowledge but also to explain conduct. Moreover, two code sections are cited, Code Ann. § 38-302 (now OCGA § 24-3-2) and § 38-309 (now OCGA § 24-3-8). The latter is not applicable to the case before us at all, which deals only with OCGA § 24-3-2. In addition, the current case does not deal with explaining conduct but purely with showing knowledge. Moreover, Fletcher’s holding is somewhat governed by the caveat set out in Division 4 of that opinion, namely, that the court viewed the evidence very liberally because of the particular issues in that case. Those issues, or comparable liberalizing ones, do not exist here.
OCGA § 24-3-2 allows as original evidence that which would ordinarily be hearsay if it constitutes facts which “explain conduct” or “ascertain motives.” Neither one of these was the purpose here, as plaintiff was not seeking by this evidence to show why the nursing home acted as it did with respect to Fannie Murray, that is, the reason or basis or cause of its behavior towards her, but rather that it had knowledge which should have prompted it to act in a different way. As counsel explained when the objection based on hearsay was made, “we are charging the nursing home with knowledge of dangerous propensities of a patient. She [the administrator] has testified earlier that the history is something they take when they bring a patient in.” The court allowed the evidence for the limited purpose of showing that, in connection with the case of Fannie Murray, the home had knowledge of that report, which was in its file on the patient who injured Fannie Murray, having been prepared by its social services director based on conversations with the patient upon his admission three years earlier, and which statement of the patient it considered *243to be true. Defendant had said in its opening statement that the home did not know of the incidents involving that patient which had occurred prior to his admission to the home because he came directly from the hospital and the certification had already been done by someone else.
Decided September 26, 1985.
Daniell S. Landers, for appellant.
Rudolph J. Chambless, C. Edwin Rozier, for appellee.
Thus, the home’s knowledge of patient Hannon’s reportedly violent propensities prior to admission was in issue, as related to its duty to protect Fannie Murray from harm. Although the evidence does not come within the four corners of the explicit language of OCGA § 24-3-2, it comes within its principle. That is, as shown in the court’s discussion in Momon v. State, 249 Ga. 865 (294 SE2d 482) (1982), of the history of the section, the section only identifies some examples of evidence which are not in the nature of hearsay in the first place. OCGA § 24-3-2 is not all-inclusive however. As pointed out by Green-leaf, whose writing was the source of the code section: “ ‘This doctrine applies to all other communications, wherever the fact that such communication was made, and not its truth or falsity, is the point in controversy.’ ” Momon, supra at 867.
This fits the evidence here precisely. Whether Hannon had previously injured his sisters was not at issue; nor was the issue whether Hannon had so told the social services director. What was at issue was whether the nursing home knew in 1984 that it had such a report in its file, and that was the subject and limited use of the administrator’s testimony. Thus it was not hearsay, because the very fact in controversy was merely whether the document containing such statements was within the knowledge of defendant.