Court Opinion

ID: 9593936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:25:46.555981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:04:43.647158
License: Public Domain

White, C.J.,
concurring.
Although I concur with the result in this case, my disagreement with the majority’s inference that the trial court erred in initially admitting exhibit 4 necessitates that I write separately.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 27-703 (Reissue 1995) (Rule 703) states:
The facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to him at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible in evidence.
Rule 703 clearly states that an expert may rely on data which include otherwise inadmissible data in reaching an opinion. This court has stated that otherwise inadmissible data upon which an expert relies may be admitted on direct examination if the opponent fails to object or if the evidence is offered not to prove the truth of the matter asserted, but simply to demonstrate the basis for the expert’s testimony. See, State v. Hayden, 237 Neb. 286, 466 N.W.2d 66 (1991) (excluding reports from evidence as inadmissible hearsay because they were offered to prove truth of matter asserted); Capps v. Manhart, 236 Neb. 16, 458 N.W.2d 742 (1990) (finding that expert’s reference to outside literature and research, not offered to prove truth of contents, was not error when literature was not offered as independent evidence of its truth); State v. Hayden, 233 Neb. 211, 444 N.W.2d 317 (1989) (allowing reports into evidence and finding that said reports were not hearsay because they were admitted for purpose of explaining basis of expert’s direct testimony); Sorensen v. Lower Niobrara Nat. Resources Dist., 221 Neb. 180, 376 N.W.2d 539 (1985) (finding prejudicial error in admission of copy of director’s order containing unidentified *721expert’s opinion at prior hearing in part because order was hearsay in that it was offered to prove truth of matter asserted). For a detailed discourse on Nebraska case law interpretation of Rule 703, see R. Collin Mangrum, Opinion and Expert Testimony in Nebraska, 27 Creighton L. Rev. 85 (1993), and The Honorable F.A. Gossett III, Judge Gossett’s Nebraska Evidence Handbook (1995).
In the instant case, the trial court did not err in admitting exhibit 4, the drawing of the scene prepared by Koehler’s expert witness using the reports, maps, diagrams, and measurements obtained from law enforcement reports. Rule 703 permits experts to rely on facts or data that might otherwise be inadmissible if the facts or data are of the type reasonably relied on by experts in the particular field in forming opinions. The expert testified that the reports provided to him contained the type of information on which an accident reconstructionist would normally rely in forming conclusions and opinions. Even if we accept Farmers’ characterization of exhibit 4 as a recreation of the actual law enforcement reports, our case law would support its admission on direct examination in this case because it was composed of the type of information reasonably relied on by accident reconstruction experts in reaching their opinions and was not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, and because Koehler’s expert testified that he created exhibit 4 solely to explain to the jury the underlying basis of his opinion.
The majority relies heavily on Stang-Starr v. Byington, 248 Neb. 103, 532 N.W.2d 26 (1995), to support its position that exhibit 4 was inadmissible. However, Stang-Starr is clearly distinguishable from the instant case. In Stang-Starr, the plaintiff attempted to have her witness read portions of a medical treatise into evidence such that she tried to use “her witness to recite the opinion of each authority cited instead of eliciting her witness’ expert opinion derived from the witness’ own knowledge and experience.” Id. at 110, 532 N.W.2d at 31. We differentiated that situation from situations such as the one presented in the instant case by stating,
“When, however, the witness has gone to many sources— although some or all be hearsay in nature — and rather than introducing mere summaries of each source he uses them *722all, along with his own professional experience, to arrive at his opinion, that opinion is regarded as evidence in its own right and not as an attempt to introduce hearsay in disguise.”
Id. at 111, 532 N.W.2d at 31, quoting United States v. Williams, 431 F.2d 1168 (5th Cir. 1970), aff’d en banc 447 F.2d 1285 (5th Cir. 1971), cert. denied 405 U.S. 954, 92 S. Ct. 1168, 31 L. Ed. 2d 231 (1972).
None of the concerns present in Stang-Starr were present in this case. As the majority noted, “Lynch stated that in order to draw exhibit 4, he was not required to make any conclusions from the accident reports. Rather, the content of exhibit 4 was limited to measurements taken from the accident reports.” Lynch used the measurements taken from the reports along with his own professional experience to arrive at his opinion, and he created exhibit 4 to explain the basis of that opinion to the jury. Thus, I would find that the trial court, in initially admitting exhibit 4, committed no error requiring a cure through the adoptive admission analysis employed by the majority in reaching its conclusion.
Gerrard, J., joins in this concurrence.