Court Opinion

ID: 9752314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:57:21.185294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:13.561873
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(concurring).
Because I cannot agree with the majority’s assertion that diagnoses contained in hospital records are never admissible under the business records exception to the hearsay rule, I cannot join in the opinion of the Court.
Appellant was charged with the murder of Raymond Anderson. At trial, appellant admitted he fired the fatal shot but asserted the homicide was justifiable because done to protect the life of a friend who was being beaten by the deceased. In order to demonstrate that his friend’s life was truly endangered, appellant sought to introduce into evidence hospital records. These showed that, following the fracas, the friend was admitted to a hospital. They also contained the treating physician’s diagnosis of the friend’s injuries. Although appellant recognized that these records were hearsay, he maintained they were admissible under the business records exception statutorily created by the Act of May 4, 1939, P.L. 42, §2,28 P.S. § 91b (1958).1
*457The trial court admitted the records only in so far as they proved the fact of the friend’s hospitalization and the duration of his stay in the hospital. It refused to admit that part of the record that contained the diagnosis of the physician who treated the friend.
The majority today breezily affirms the trial court’s ruling, concluding that hospital records are admissible only to show the fact of hospitalization, treatment prescribed and symptoms given. It asserts, moreover, because the physician’s diagnosis is opinion evidence, it is not admissible where the physician is not available to testify.2
In my view, the majority’s resolution of this issue is inconsistent with the rationale underlying the business and professional records exception to the hearsay rule. McCormick gives the following reasons for the exception:
“The exception is justified on grounds analogous to those underlying other exceptions to the hearsay rule. Unusual reliability is regarded as furnished by the fact that in practice regular entries have a comparatively high degree of accuracy (as compared to other memoranda) because such books and records are customarily checked as to correctness by systematic balance-striking, because the very regularity and continuity of the records is calculated to train the record-keeper in habits of precision, and because in actual ex*458perience the entire business of the nation and many other activities constantly function in reliance upon entries of this kind.”
McCormick’s Handbook of the Law of Evidence § 306, at 720 (2d ed. E. Cleary, 1972). Wigmore finds that the fact that hospital records are “made and relied upon in affairs of life and death” renders them especially reliable. VI Wigmore, Evidence § 1707, at 36 (3d ed. 1940).
The physician’s diagnosis is probably the most important element in the hospital record in determining what treatment is necessary to preserve the patient’s life and health. It would seem, therefore, that the reliability of the diagnosis is sufficiently safeguarded to allow its admission even where there is no opportunity for the non-offering party to cross-examine the recording physician. Cf. Commonwealth v. Harris, 351 Pa. 325, 41 A.2d 688 (1945).
Furthermore, I question the efficacy of cross-examination to uncover discrepancies in the physician’s diagnois. As Professor Wigmore has recognized,
“[a]'midst the day-to-day details of sources of hospital cases, the physicians and nurses can ordinarily recall from actual memory few or none of the specific data entered; they themselves rely upon the record of their own action; hence to call them to the stand would ordinarily add little or nothing to the information furnished by the record alone. The occasional errors and omissions, occurring in the routine work of a large staff, are no more an obstacle to the general trustworthiness of such records than are the errors of witnesses on the stand.”
Wigmore, supra. See generally, 4 Weinstein’s Evidence, ¶ 803(6) [04] (1975); but see McCormick, supra, § 313.
Finally, although the use of the record deprives the non-offering party of the opportunity to explore the physician’s qualifications, the fact that the diagnostician is a *459physician on the staff of a hospital assures at least minimal qualifications. The fact that no greater competence is indicated by the record can be adequately communicated to the jury.
However, even assuming that there may be some danger in admitting diagnoses without cross-examination of the recording physician,3 this does not dictate that all records containing diagnoses must be excluded from evidence. Judge Weinstein reports that “most federal courts reached an accommodation between the need for relevant information and the fear of uncross-examined opinion. They drew a distinction between diagnoses involving ‘conjecture and opinion’ and diagnoses upon which ‘competent physicians would not differ.’ ” 4 Weinstein’s Evidence, ¶ 803(b) [04] at 803-158 (1975). Records containing diagnoses tending toward the former *460were excluded, those tending toward the latter were not.4 McCormick finds a similar development in several state courts. McCormick, supra, § 313. A sample of cases in which other jurisdictions have held that, at least in some situations, diagnoses are admissible include Thomas v. Hogan, 308 F.2d 355 (4th Cir. 1962); Bailey v. Tennessee Coal, Iron & RR. Co., 261 Ala. 526, 75 So.2d 117 (1954); Tyron v. Casey, Kan.App., 416 S.W.2d 252 (1967); Brown v. St. Paul City Ry. Co., 241 Minn. 15, 62 N.W.2d 688 (1954) (dictum); Allen v. St. Louis, 365 Mo. 677, 285 S.W.2d 663 (1956); Weis v. Weis, 147 Ohio St. 416, 72 N.E.2d 245 (1947) (dictum); McReynolds v. Howland, 218 Or. 566, 346 P.2d 127 (1969); Travis Life Insurance Co. v. Rodriguez, 326 S.W.2d 256 (Tex.Ct.Civ.App.1959); Joseph v. W. H. Groves Latter Day Saints Hospital, 7 Utah 2d 39, 318 P.2d 330 (1957); Noland v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co., 57 Wis.2d 633, 205 N.W.2d 388 (1963).
On thé basis of these authorities, I cannot agree that a prohibition on the admission of all hospital records containing diagnoses is necessary. However, I need not determine in what circumstances diagnoses should be ad*461missible or whether in the present case the report in question was admissible. In my view, the exclusion of the report if it were error, was harmless.
As stated previously, appellant sought to have admitted the hospital record to show that his friend had been badly beaten by the deceased. Although the trial court refused to admit the part of the record containing the physician’s diagnosis, it did permit the admission of the part of the record indicating that the friend had to be hospitalized as a result of the struggle and that he remained thereafter in the hospital for two months. From this evidence, the jury must have realized that the deceased had inflicted an awful beating on appellant’s friend. The evidence describing the exact nature of the friend’s injuries which was contained in the physician’s diagnosis would have virtually no additional effect on the . jury in light of other testimony about the beating. I am therefore convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that had the excluded evidence been admitted, it would have had no effect upon the judgment. Thus the error was harmless.

. Section 91b provides:
“A record of an act, condition or event shall, in so far as relevant, be competent evidence if the custodian or other qualified *457witness testifies to its identity and the mode of its preparation, and if it was made in the regular course of business at or near the time of the act, condition or event, and if, in the opinion of the court, the sources of information, method and time of preparation were such as to justify its admission.”

. To be sure, there is some support in the cases for the majority’s holding. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Mobley, 450 Pa. 431, 301 A.2d 622 (1973); Platt v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 361 Pa. 652, 66 A.2d 266 (1949); see generally Commonwealth v. McCloud, 457 Pa. 310, 322 A.2d 653 (1973) (admission of autopsy report offered by prosecution in a murder trial violates confrontation clause). The statute itself is silent on this point.
There is apparently no question that the record otherwise met all the requirements of the act.

. The arguments for and against the admission of diagnoses in hospital records are cogently summarized by Judge Weinstein:
“Those who objected to admission of records containing diagnoses argued that the ‘difference between a “fact” and an “opinion” is one of the fundamental differences in the law of evidence;’ that ‘under the traditional rules of evidence, a witness must be shown to be qualified before he is permitted to give an expert opinion;’ that the accuracy of the'.'opinion cannot be evaluated without the safeguard of cross-examination; and that the jury would be so impressed by the opinion that even subsequent rebuttal could not overcome the initial reaction.
“By contrast, proponents of the admissibility of medical records containing diagnostic opinions stressed the need for such evidence and the accuracy of such records on which ‘[h]uman life will often depend.’ They contend ‘that if it is proven or judicially noticed that the hospital from which the records come is a reputable institution of high standards this would justify the inference that what purports to be diagnoses made by physicians are made by doctors duly qualified to give such opinions,’ and they pointed out that the adversary ‘may himself call the declarant and thus bring-out, if he can, any weaknesses of the diagnosis.’ In addition, failure to call the doctor may permit an opponent a field day in showing ‘shortcomings’ in the procedures used which might have been readily explained if the doctor who prepared the report was present; there is a self-limiting feature that minimized abuse.”
4 Weinstein’s Evidence ¶ 803(b)[04] at 803-156-58 (1975) (footnotes omitted).

. Fed.R.Evid. 803(6) not permits the admission of diagnoses whether they are routine or speculative. The rule, however, permits the trial court to exclude a particular record where indications of trustworthiness are lacking. The rule permits admission of:
“A memorandum, report, record, or data compilation, in any form, of acts, events, conditions, opinions, or diagnoses, made at or near the time by, or from information transmitted by, a person with knowledge, if kept in the course of a regularly conducted business activity, and if it was the regular practice of that business activity to make the memorandum, report, record, or data compilation, all as shown by the testimony of the custodian or other qualified witness, unless the source of information or the method or cirumstances of preparation indicate lack of trustworthiness. The term ‘business’ as used in this paragraph includes business, institution, association, profession, occupation, and calling of every kind, whether or not conducted for profit.”
Pub.L. No. 93-595 (Jan. 2, 1975), 2 U.S.Code, Cong. & Admin. News, pp. 2236-2237.