Court Opinion

ID: 9735127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:03:06.663284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.568282
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.
(dissenting). I agree with much of the majority’s analysis: that the contents of the accident report were hearsay; that, because of the discrepancy in certain details between it and the husband’s trial testimony, its admission in evidence may have affected the outcome; and that, because of the special circumstances attendant upon an interspousal action, there is unusual probative value to the report.
Nevertheless, I would be constrained to reverse the judgment for the reason that the report was admitted, over the *654plaintiff’s objection,1 for its full probative value. Kelly v. O’Neil, 1 Mass. App. Ct. 313, 316-317 (1973). The sequence of events at trial exacerbated the error, for the report was admitted through Officer Leather, the plaintiff’s first witness. Thus, the “prior inconsistent statement” of the husband was before the jury, without limitation, even before the husband himself had been called as a witness.2
However salutary the majority’s suggestion may be that we interpret generously exceptions to the hearsay rule in the context of interspousal negligence actions, I cannot agree with what strikes me as a substantial change in the law.

In my view, the plaintiff’s objection, though perhaps not precisely on the mark, was sufficient to preserve the issue for review. Commonwealth v. Fatalo, 345 Mass. 85, 87 (1962).

As to the question whether the report may have been admissible as a “public record” in one sense of that term — availability for public inspection under G. L. c. 66, § 10 (Lord v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles, 347 Mass. 608 [1964]) — it does not necessarily follow that the contents of the report are admissible under the oEcial written statement exception to the hearsay rule. On that point, Kelly v. O’Neil, supra at 318-319, also is controlling.