Court Opinion

ID: 9752384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:03:58.644718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:45.575485
License: Public Domain

Loiselle, J.
(dissenting.) The analysis of General Statutes § 4-104 as to the admissibility of hospital records in the majority opinion is, in my opinion, *637correct. Further, I agree that the court was in error in allowing that portion of the hospital records that indicated the location of the fall. However, even though it was error on the court’s part to allow that portion of the hospital reeord to be received in evidence, it was not harmful. The first hospital record, as stated in the majority opinion, recited that the fall occurred in another locality. The second hospital reeord stated both the date and location of the fall as claimed by the plaintiff. At no place in the reeord or in the testimony in the trial is there a claim by anyone that the fall in question happened anywhere but where the plaintiff claims she fell. The only witness for the defendant testified that the plaintiff fell where she claimed she did and, in fact, described the exact location as that claimed by the plaintiff. Finally, in argument to the jury, defendant’s counsel admitted that the plaintiff fell in the defendant’s store on the date and location she alleged. I fail to see how a jury could have been misled by these facts to a finding that a fall occurred in a locality other than the place claimed by the plaintiff and admitted by the defendant.
Assuming, arguendo, that despite the testimony of all the witnesses and the admission by counsel during argument that the plaintiff fell in the defendant’s store, the most that the jury could find would be that there were two separate falls at two separate locations. This finding by the jury would go only to damages and not to liability. Whether the plaintiff might have fallen somewhere else, either before or after her fall at the defendant’s store, would in no way affect a determination of whether the defendant was liable for a fall in its store, which all the testimony refers to and which *638was admitted by the defendant in testimony and again in argument. And, even if the jury could speculate that all injuries complained of by the plaintiff were from the “other fall,” despite all the testimony given at the trial, despite the statements of the defendant’s counsel, and despite the second hospital report which unquestionably refers to the fall in the defendant’s store, the plaintiff would be entitled to a plaintiff’s verdict of some Mnd, even if for only nominal damages, if the jury found that the fall in the defendant’s store was proximately caused by the defendant’s negligence and that she was in exercise of due care. Evidence as to a prior fall could only have affected the extent of recovery for that invasion of her person. Thus, even if the colloquy between the plaintiff’s attorney and the defendant’s attorney which is recited in the majority opinion and which occurred in'the absence of the jury indicates that the admitted evidence was considered relevant by both parties, the relevance of that evidence, in fact, went only to the extent of the defendant’s liability for damages. As the fall in the defendant’s store was admitted, the evidence of a prior fall could not affect the question of “causation in fact” for this event, but only the question of the portion of the total damages sustained which may be properly assigned to the defendant as distinguished from other causes. This question is primarily not one of the fact of causation, but one of ¡apportionment of damages. See Prosser, Torts (3d Ed.) §§ 41 and 42.
In the present case, the jury found that either the defendant was not negligent or if negligent, and its negligence was the proximate cause of the fall, that the plaintiff was eontributorily negligent. The jury never reached the issue of damages and the question *639of whether the injuries claimed resulted from one fall, whatever location they deemed it to have occurred, or from both falls.
I would find no error.
In this opinion House, C. J., concurred.