Court Opinion

ID: 9884858
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:18:09.677596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:41.352390
License: Public Domain

Jennings, J.
(dissenting). The majority opinion holds that the admission of the answer of the state police officer was prejudicial error because the question did not contain sufficient facts to form the basis of an opinion. I think the remark of the trial judge that objections to such testimony go to its weight rather than to its admissibility expressed the correct rule. Connecticut has been quite liberal in this regard. Nesbit v. Crosby, 74 Conn. 554, 565, 51 A. 550; Wray v. Fairfield Amusement Co., 126 Conn. 221, 224, 10 A. 2d 600; Rogoff v. Southern New England Contractors Supply Co., 129 Conn. 687, 691, 31 A. 2d 29. The better reasoning seems to me to support the policy hitherto in effect here. Professor Wigmore says the rule excluding such evidence will soon cease to exist. 7 Wigmore, Evidence (3d Ed.) §§ 1929, 1977. This accident happened in 1947. The case should not be sent back for a new trial unless the error was so serious as to require that course. I go no further in this dissenting opinion than to list some of the grounds on which, I submit, a new trial could be avoided. The ruling was correct. Wray and Rogoff cases, supra; Wigmore, loe. cit.; Jackson v. Anthony, 282 Mass. 540, 543, 185 N. E. 389; *387Lenehan v. Travers, 288 Mass. 156, 158, 192 N. E. 495; Fannon v. Morton, 228 Ill. App. 415, 426; Luethe v. Schmidt-Gaertner Co., 170 Wis. 590, 594, 176 N. W. 63; Heidner v. Germschied, 41 S. D. 430, 431, 171 N. W. 208. The ruling was within the discretion of the trial court. Wray case, supra; Lenehan v. Travers, supra, 159. The admission of the answer did not harm the plaintiff. The physical damage caused by the car was so extensive that it must either have overshadowed the testimony as to speed or have made it an honest and good estimate. Even if technically erroneous, such a single bit of testimony in general harmony with the other evidence should not be held reversible error. State v. Kurz, 131 Conn. 54, 65, 37 A. 2d 808. As Professor Wigmore comments (7 Wigmore, op. cit., p. 136), “that the law should require supreme judges to give time to the consideration of such infinitesimal quibbles in the mass of proof, will some day seem incredible.”