Court Opinion

ID: 9601351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:42:27.995837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:56.962784
License: Public Domain

BERRY, Justice
(concurring specially).
The term “spontaneous” as applied to “res gestae” expressions emphasizes the idea of an inner impulse acting without an external stimulus; it lays primary stress on the absence of external compulsion. A spontaneous expression is one made under the dominating influence of the very occurrence to which it relates. This is in contrast to communications which are elicited through a deliberate interchange of thoughts between two or more persons. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Nelson, Okl., 384 P.2d 914. Measured by these definitions, the statements by the deceased workman made in answer to his daughter’s inquiry cannot, strictly speaking, qualify as spontaneous in nature. Although the daughter’s initial question to her father was doubtless provoked instinctively by his sudden appearance in a state of ill health, this, of course, cannot in any way alter the fact that decedent’s expressions were not voluntary or spontaneous but given in response to a direct query. The conversation between decedent and his daughter took place when decedent was resting at his home some three hours after the alleged episode of exertion.
While decedent’s statements lack, the requisite quality of spontaneity, there is, in my opinion, sufficient evidence here as to decedent’s condition to justify our inference that at the time the expressions in question were made decedent was actually in a state of shock so that his reflective faculties remained stilled. This does, to *513my way of thinking, eliminate the possibility of design and renders the statements admissible. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Nelson, supra.
I,therefore, concur specially in the Court’s opinion.