Court Opinion

ID: 9731067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:32:03.584901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:12.782084
License: Public Domain

Duncan, J.,
dissenting: According to my interpretation of the testimony of the plaintiff’s attending physician, he attributed no ill effects to the plaintiff’s injury at the time of the trial, and recognized at most only a possibility of future suffering. Such proof is insufficient to support a verdict for future damages according to the principles established by L’Esperance v. Sherburne, 85 N. H. 103 and Emerson v. Company, 87 N. H. 108. I do not conceive that the probable consequences of an injury such as the plaintiff received are so obvious or generally known that the common knowledge of laymen may be substituted for the judgment of experts as to what they will be. Such prognosis has not passed from the “field of expertness” into the “area of the commonplace supposedly within the ken of every person of moderate intelligence.” See Maguire, Evidence — Common Sense and Common Law, p. 30.