Court Opinion

ID: 9720094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:15:23.636604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:31.746442
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). I concur with Justice Kavanagh, yet with present writing am not satisfied that we are being entirely fair with the trial judge. The judge applied 1 of 2 lines of contradictory decisions handed down with respect to the unamended act of 1909 (CL 1948, § 617.66 [Stat Ann § 27.915] ),  saying that the plaintiff “chose” to make defendant “his own witness under the statute”, and that he was “bound” accordingly as certain of said decisions have erroneously affirmed. Some explanation is due; hence the following submission.
There is no need to repeat now what 4 of us said of the cited statute in Monaghan v. Pavsner, 347 Mich 511, 518, 527-530. That is all of record. Nevertheless, our failure since then—to definitely resolve the question—has led some judges, as Judge *548Noe here, to assume that the errant rule still applies and that the concluding phrase of the statute does, not mean what it says. There is no other explanation for the judge’s action, he having said that the fact alone, of utilization by plaintiff of the statute, lifted the burden of overcoming the statutory presumption of negligence from defendant’s shoulders and warranted a directed verdict of not guilty. See quotation, in Mr. Justice Kavanagh’s opinion, of Judge Noe’s reason for upholding defendant’s testimony as-a matter of law.
It is time to say with the assurance of firmness-that one party by calling the opposite party under the statute does not make such opposite party his witness and that he is “bound” by the testimony of such called'party to no greater extent than if the same testimony had been given by the called party as a part of his own case. Have we not, on frequent or infrequent occasion, forgotten or overlooked the very purpose as well as the’ plain wording of this statute? It concludes, and has concluded for a half century, by saying that “the party so calling and examining such witness shall not be bound to accept such answers as true.”
The sound rule to which we should return was announced by the Court when its members were “there,” as the saying goes, referring to the time when the statute was debated and adopted. It is. simply this: “Defendant’s testimony so developed stood in no different position in the case than it would had it been called out by cross-examination after he had taken the stand in his own behalf.”' The quotation is from the 1916 case of Aphoresmenos v. McIntosh, 189 Mich 680, 683, 684. That case was expressly followed, by the exact language quoted, in Waller v. Sloan, 225 Mich 600, 604, 605, and City of Detroit v. Porath, 271 Mich 42, 76. In *549the last cited case the Court said, unanimously (P 75):
“Testimony elicited upon cross-examination of the opposite party, or his agents, stands in no different position than it would if the adversary of the party calling the witness had called him himself. The act makes the agents and servants of a party subject to cross-examination by the opposite party without qualification. The statute does not give the right to make such witnesses the witnesses of the adversary of the party calling them. Jones v. Pere Marquette R. Co., 168 Mich 1. Except as the statute provides the party calling such witnesses shall not be bound by, and may contradict, their testimony, no other right is conferred by the statute. Johnson v. Union Carbide Co., 169 Mich 651.”
Tested by this obvious horse sense of our occasionally ignored legal fathers, defendant’s credible or incredible testimony (that the brakes of his car failed without fault attributable to him) made an issue for determination in the jury room; not the courtroom. Plaintiffs were no more “bound” by such testimony than if defendant had given it exclusively after plaintiffs had rested their case.
I concur in reversal for new trial.
Kavanagh, Souris, Otis M. Smith, and Adams, JJ., concurred with Black, J.