Court Opinion

ID: 9681860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:59:51.007905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:36.245978
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. I do not enjoy dissenting from an opinion so well written and so well researched. In fact, the majority opinion correctly states the law as it has been developed in the past. However, I write with the hope of pointing out that the rationale behind these older decisions is not present in today’s society. Relevant evidence, according to A.R.E. Rule 401, is evidence “having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Rule 402 states: “All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by statute or by these rules or by other rules applicable in the courts of this State.” Of course the trial court must have discretion in determining the qualifications of a reconstruction expert. The speed of the vehicles was a matter in sharp dispute in the present case. The investigating officer, who did not witness the accident, gave his testimony concerning the speed of the vehicles at the time of the accident. Certainly evidence on this issue is relevant. All relevant evidence is admissible. It seems to me that if the testimony of one witness concerning speed is relevant, certainly evidence presented by another witness on the same issue is relevant. In Woodward v. Blythe, 249 Ark. 793, 462 S.W.2d 205 (1971), this court held that expert testimony was necessary in that case for an understanding by the jurors of the physical dynamics and causal relationships involved in the accident. Woodward was rather an unusual case, but the reasons for allowing the testimony of a reconstruction expert are the same in the present case. In a case decided after the uniform rules were adopted, we held that it was proper to permit the testimony of a reconstruction expert. In B & J Byers Trucking, Inc. v. Robinson, 281 Ark. 442, 665 S.W.2d 258 (1984), we upheld the action of the trial court permitting an officer to testify as a reconstruction expert. The jury in the present case was not shown to have been in any better position to make computations and figure out the physical dynamics and causal relationships involved in the accident than was the jury in Byers. Our cases should be controlled by the rules of evidence. If evidence is relevant, it is admissible, unless it is excluded by some other rule or law. Otherwise, our cases will continue to be in hopeless conflict.