Court Opinion

ID: 9653271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:42:36.723751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:48.357768
License: Public Domain

CAMMACK, Judge
(dissenting).
With due respect for the opinion of the majority of this Court, I feel constrained to dissent from the views expressed therein concerning judicial admissions.
It is not disputed that the record contains sufficient evidence of the defendant’s (appellant’s) negligence to support the judgment against him. The only question is whether or not the plaintiff’s (appellee’s) testimony constituted a “judicial admission” so as to bind him and prevent his recovery despite the other evidence of the defendant’s negligence. If his testimony is not a “judicial admission,” the issue of negligence was properly submitted to the jury.
A judicial admission is “an express waiver, made in court or preparatory to trial, by the party or his attorney, conceding for the purposes of the trial the truth of some alleged fact * * * so that the one party need offer no evidence to prove it, and the other is not allowed to disprove it.” Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., Vol. IX, section 2588. This traditional definition has been extended in some jurisdictions so as to include, in certain instances, statements made by a party during his testimony on a trial. Wigmore criticizes the extension, saying: “The truth of the case depends on a comparison of what all the witnesses say and all the circumstances indicate. A rule which binds a party to a particular statement uttered on the stand becomes an artificial rule.” Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., Vol. IX, section 2594a.
In Sutherland v. Davis, 286 Ky. 743, 151 S.W.2d 1021, 1025, this Court adopted the extension of the rule. The majority opinion treats that case as authority for the principle that a party’s contradicted testimony may constitute a judicial admission. With this conclusion I am unable to agree. The question involved in that case was the plaintiff’s contributory negligence in riding in an automobile with the defendant while the latter was intoxicated. There was conflicting evidence concerning the defendant’s intoxication, but the plaintiff testified that she realized he was drunk. In the course of the opinion we said:
“She was not simply giving her impressions of an event as a participant or observer but she was testifying to facts peculiarly within her knowledge, i. e., realization of the fact that appel-lee was drunk at the time of the accident * * (My emphasis.)
Since the question was one of contributory negligence, it was the plaintiff’s state of mind at the time of the accident which was controlling. Her state of mind was a fact “peculiarly within her knowledge” and we held that her testimony on the matter therefore constituted a judicial admission and should be deemed conclusive. The testimony which was contradicted did not concern the plaintiff’s state of mind, but only the intoxication of the defendant
Our later case of Halbert v. Lange, 313 Ky. 648, 233 S.W.2d 278, 280, also relied upon in the majority opinion, likewise restricted the extension of the “judicial admission” doctrine, in cases involving a party’s testimony, to cases where the party testifies to facts peculiarly within his own knowledge. Therein we said:
“The true test seems to be whether the party’s testimony is merely a narrative of events observed or participated in, wherein there is always present the obvious possibility that he, like any *818other witness, could be mistaken, or ■ whether he was testifying to facts peculiarly within his own knowledge. * * *»
In the 1 case now ■ under consideration, the plaintiff testified that the defendant was driving at a reasonable speed on his right side of the road. These were merely “events observed”' by -the plaintiff, not “facts peculiarly within. his. own knowledge.” As such, under our previous cases, in my opinion his testimony-does not constitute a “judicial admission.”