Court Opinion

ID: 9758623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:38:24.370825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:53.548685
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Chief Justice,
Concurring.
While I concur with the majority opinion, I disagree with Part II which overrules a long line of important decisions of this Court. Even if the majority believes these decisions should be overruled, it is unnecessary in this case as Dr. Bright was clearly a treating physician.
This Court has long observed the view that statements of medical history given to treating physicians were reliable, while such statements given to physicians who merely examine for the purpose of collecting evidence lacked reliability. This view was articulated in Drumm v. Commonwealth, Ky., 783 S.W.2d 380 (1990), and followed in a number of subsequent decisions. On the view that KRE 803(4) amounts to an adoption of federal decisions decided on similar language in the federal rules of evidence, the majority has abandoned Kentucky precedent. In part, this is based on a dubious construction of KRE 403. I do not believe that adoption of the Kentucky Rules of Evidence required a wholesale abandonment of pre-1992 evidence law precedent.
As Drumm and other cases make clear, exclusion of the history given by the person being examined serves to prevent bolstering or lending of physician credibility to the version of evidence told by the witness or party in interest in circumstances where the physician has no direct knowledge. Without such a rule of exclusion, inevitably the jury or trier of fact will tend to give greater weight to the testimony of the witness simply because it is repeated by the physician, when in fact, there is only one version and the physician is merely repeating it.
STUMBO, J., joins this concurring opinion.