Court Opinion

ID: 9650897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:54:48.084047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:26.722240
License: Public Domain

HOLMES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Appellee claims to have been injured on December 15, 1934, in Oklahoma, while 'working for the Community Natural Gas Company. He was removing dirt from under a pipe in a ditch, when the sides of the ditch caved in, covering him with wet, cloddy dirt and gravel and pinning him in a stooped position. The theory on which he was allowed to recover was that the shock and injury activated a dormant tubercular condition, resulting in. disability. Prior to such injury, the evidence is sufficient to show that he was in good health and fully able to perform his work.
I think the trial court erred in the admission of material evidence which was incompetent and prejudicial. Dr. Huffman, over appellant’s objection, was permitted to testify that in the latter part of January, following the injury, the appellee “spit a little blood,” and that the doctor thought the bloodstained sputum came from the patient’s lungs. The doctor neither saw the appellee spit blood nor saw the bloodstained sputum, but based his testimony solely on what the latter said when he came to the doctor’s office in the latter part of January, 1935. Although a witness in his own behalf, appellee did not testify to this fact, nor did any one else. There is no other reference to the subject in the record, except it was assumed as a fact in a hypothetical question to an expert witness by counsel for appellant. Having been admitted as competent evidence by the court, ap*243pellant’s attorney necessarily included it as a hypothesis in order to qualify the question he was propounding. By so doing, he did not waive his previous exception to the incompetency of the testimony.
If appellee’s statement be true, it does not appear when or where he spit blood or who was present. The statement was made more than a month after the accident, was no part of the res gestae, and not an exclamation of present pain or suffering. Self-serving in character, it was the relation of a past event which occurred at an unknown time and place. I regard it as hearsay, and incompetent as part of appellee’s evidence in chief to prove the substantive fact that he actually “spit a little blood” during the latter part of January, 1935. Upon the facts of the case, the admission of this testimony is deemed reversible error. Vicksburg & Meridian Railroad Co. v. O’Brien, 119 U.S. 99, 7 S.Ct. 118, 30 L.Ed. 299; Boston & Albany Railroad Co. v. O’Reilly, 158 U.S. 334, 15 S.Ct. 830, 39 L. Ed. 1006; Halleck v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. (C.C.A.) 75 F.(2d) 800; Travelers’ Protective Ass’n v. West (C.C. A.) 102 F. 226, 227; United States v. Balance, 61 App.D.C. 226, 59 F.(2d) 1040; National Masonic Acc. Ass’n v. Shryock (C.C.A.) 73 F. 774; Davidson v. Cornell, 132 N.Y. 228, 30 N.E. 573; Stringfellow v. Montgomery, 57 Tex. 349. Also, see note 14 Ann.Cas. 449.