Court Opinion

ID: 9450598
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:52:35.957202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:23.116014
License: Public Domain

CASTLE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Miss Shea, testifying as a government witness, stated that she was employed by the defendant from April 1954 until December 1961, and that among her duties was bookkeeping. She identified the types of records she kept, including the daily log book and the account cards, and described the office procedure, including her receipt of the payments by the patients in person or through the mail, and her entries in the records. On cross-examination she was asked: “In all the years you worked for Dr. Mortimer, Miss Shea, did Dr. Mortimer ever so much as once ask you to post directly to the ledger cards or deliberately omit any *504kind of financial information?” The court sustained the government’s objection and ruled the question was not within the scope of the direct examination.
The subject matter of the office nurse’s direct examination concerned office procedure, the posting of payments received from patients, and instructions given her by the defendant. The question asked was well within that subject matter. The court improperly refused to permit the witness to answer. But, as Judge Schnackenberg points out, the trial was to the court and there is abundant evidence to support the court’s finding and judgment. On the facts and circumstances presented by this record the error neither requires nor warrants a reversal.