Court Opinion

ID: 9681902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:01:02.580727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:36.507262
License: Public Domain

PRESLAR, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the holding of the majority and would affirm this case by admitting the deceased’s statement concerning his injury. A further reason for this dissent is to point up a basic weakness of the law in this area — where a man works alone and there are no witnesses to the cause of death. A phase of this law is wrong, because under it survivors of a man who works alone could have a perfect case, and yet recovery be denied because there were no witnesses. For all practical purposes under such circumstances, the man who works alone is denied death benefits and the employer is wasting his money in premium payments therefor. If the employee suffers an injury short of death, be it a broken finger or a totally disabling heart attack, he can tell about it and recover benefits. If, before he dies, he tells someone else about it, that’s hearsay, and there are no benefits. In brief, all findings of the jury in this case find support in the evidence and the inferences therefrom, except that the vital evidence of the “the injury” — the sudden onset of pain while manipulating equipment — is held to be inadmissible by the majority. The writer would hold this evidence admissible as part of the res gestae and an exception to the hearsay rule. Does it not come down to the trustworthiness of his account of his *546injuries? Is he more to be believed when seeking money benefits or when, as here, he is seeking to stay alive? Compensation benefits are for injuries received in the course of employment; the search here is for the truth of-whether there was injury on the job. We have been told that there was such an injury by the man who suffered it. Under the circumstances by which the story comes to us, is it worthy of belief? Standing uncontradicted, should it be relied upon in a court of law as proof of the fact of injury?
Having judicially relieved myself of any shortcomings of the law, and with no further regard for same, the writer submits that the evidence is admissible under the safeguards set out by the Supreme Court in two cases relied upon by the majority— Truck Insurance Exchange v. Michling, and Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company v. Hale.
In Michling the court quoted at length from Wigmore in his work on Evidence, 3rd Edition, § 1747, on the question of what are the general rules governing the admission of hearsay statements as res gestae:
“ ‘This general principle is based on the experience that, under certain external circumstances of physical shock, a stress of nervous excitement may be produced which stills the reflective faculties and removes their control, so that the utterance which then occurs is a spontaneous and sincere response to the actual sensations and perceptions already produced by the external shock. Since this utterance is made under the immediate and uncontrolled domination of the senses, and during the brief period when considerations of self-interest could not have been brought fully to bear by reasoned reflection, the utterance may be taken as particularly trustworthy (or, at least, as lacking the usual grounds of untrust-worthiness), and thus as expressing the real tenor of the speaker’s belief as to the facts just observed by him; and may therefore be received as testimony to those facts. * * * ’
“In § 1750 he sets out the requirements as follows:
“ ‘(a) Nature of the Occasion. There must be some occurrence, startling enough to produce this nervous excitement and render the utterance spontaneous and unreflecting. * * * ’
“ ‘(b) Time of the Utterance. The utterance must have been before there has been time to contrive and misrepresent, i. e., while the nervous excitement may be supposed still to dominate and the reflective powers to be yet in abeyance. This limitation is in practice the subject of most of the rulings.
“ ‘It is to be observed that the statements need not be strictly contemporaneous with the exciting cause; they may be subsequent to it, provided there has not been time for the exciting influence to lose its sway and to be dissipated.
“ ‘Furthermore, there can be no definite and fixed limit of time. Each case must depend upon its own circumstances.
‘“(c) Subject of the Utterance. The utterance must relate to the circumstances of the occurrence preceding it. * * j{i i it
The court then makes the statement which distinguishes that case from ours:
“ * * * the hearsay statement of Mrs. Michling is the only evidence of the event which gives rise to the statement. A hearsay statement, as res ges-tae, is admitted as an exception to the hearsay rule because it is made under circumstances which raise a reasonable presumption that it is the spontaneous utterance of thought created by or springing out of the occurrence itself and, so to speak, becomes a part of the occurrence.”
*547In our case, the event is established by-independent proof, the testimony of the doctor that a heart attack occurred. This event gave rise to the hearsay statement that it occurred during the manipulation of some equipment and was accompanied with a sudden pain. The account of how it happened sprang out of the happening— the event. The court then goes on to say:
“As said by Professor Wigmore, for a statement to come within the doctrine of res gestae it must be made as a result of some startling occurrence which renders the utterance spontaneous and un-reflecting but that is not to say that the startling occurrence itself may be proven by the statement alone.”
The “startling occurrence” here is a heart attack by a man who had a history of questionable heart trouble dating back to 1959, who had “been checked time and time again with electrocardiograms”, and had been sent to a heart specialist on a prior occasion. As noted by the majority, the doctor is positive that the attack occurred just before the man came into his office. He was apparently well when seen by three different witnesses prior to 9:00 o’clock. Within an hour he was home “nervous and upset”, and thirty minutes later was at the doctor’s office “complaining of severe chest pains in the left side of his chest, left shoulder and running up into the left jaw. He was quite apprehensive and apparently in quite a bit of distress, anxiety and marked pain.” In the writer’s opinion he was under the influence of an occurrence, startling enough to produce his nervous excitement and render the utterance spontaneous and unreflecting when he told the doctor “he had come in from the job at which place he was working, and was manipulating some equipment and had this sudden onset of severe pains.” In Michling the court cited, with authorities, the proposition that it is generally held that in passing upon the admissibility of a statement offered as a part of the res gestae the trial court has considerable discretion. I do not think the trial court abused his discretion in this case.
Another distinguishing feature of this case from Michling and Hale is that here there is no conflicting evidence as to the decedent’s statement. As to its trustworthiness, there is no reason not to believe it. In Michling and Hale, the court had evidence contrary to and discrediting the statements. In Michling, the statement was made to the wife that he had hit his head on an iron bar on the dozer he was operating. There was evidence from his employer’s records that Michling did not work on the day of the alleged occurrence, and that none of the employer’s dozers were in operation that day. Also there was evidence that there was no such iron bar on the dozer. In Hale, the statement was to a supervisor by Hale that he had been struck by the counter-balance on a pumping unit. He exhibited injuries to his groin, buttocks and lower ribs and was hospitalized for about a week. Some ten days after his discharge from the hospital he died of a heart attack. The trustworthiness of his statement was in conflict with an inspection of the pumping unit — that it was not running, and shoe prints found at the scene were not where Hale said he was standing. The court held that the statement did not meet the requirement of the res gestae requirement because there was no independent proof of the incident or occurrence to which the statements relate. In our case there was independent proof of the incident, the heart attack, as to which the statement was made. Also, the court, in Hale, said that the rationale of its decision in Michling was that to be admissible as res gestae, the statement must be shown to have been a spontaneous reaction to an exciting event, and the statements themselves cannot be used to prove the exciting event. In our case, the exciting event of the heart attack was independently proved, and the statement as to where and how it happened was not used to establish it. Nervous and upset, com*548plaining of severe pain, quite apprehensive and apparently in quite a bit of distress, anxiety and marked pain, a man with a history of heart trouble told what he was doing and what he experienced when the exciting event occurred.
Being of the opinion that the evidence is admissible or, in any event, that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in admitting the statement, I would affirm the judgment.