Court Opinion

ID: 9834087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:16:54.146574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:11.474908
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
[7] Counsel for appellant earnestly insists that we erred in our disposition of every issue raised on appeal and ignored the *640most important tliereof. We have carefully considered the motion for rehearing, and, while the record, as is often the case, presents some difficulties, we conclude our former disposition of the case should stand. We will, however, discuss the ninth assignment of error, erroneously designated as “tenth” in our opinion, which was overruled, because it raised, in our opinion, issues similar to those discussed in disposing of the eighth assignment. As -will appear from our original opinion, appellee sought on direct examination to impeach appellant by its witness Morrison, but the witness finally testified that appellant’s general reputation for truth and veracity and honesty and fair dealing was reasonably good. On cross-examination counsel for appellant drew from the witness the several incidents recited in our discussion of the eighth assignment, and upon which the witness based his opinion that appellant’s general reputation was reasonably good. Among other questions asked was the following:
“There was one circumstance where he had a falling out with the teacher of the school? A. Yes; that was one.”
Following such answer counsel for appellant also drew from the witness the admission that he based his opinion concerning appellant’s general reputation upon four other separate and distinct incidents, inquiring into the details of some of them. On re-examination counsel for appellee interrogated the witness upon the incidents so introduced, and was permitted to propound to and receive from the witness the following question and answer, to wit:
“Now, the falling out there was something he had told — that he could have that woman meet him out at any time that he wanted to — some report that he had made reflecting on her character? A. Yes.”
The objection made before the witness answered, and afterwards on motion to strike out, was that, while it was proper to prove the incidents forming the basis of the opinion, the details could not be gone into, for the reason that, it would necessitate the securing of other witnesses to prove justification of the acts disclosed, and because immaterial, irrelevant, hearsay, and self-serving. Following the objection the witness further testified that it had been three of four years since the incident occurred, and that the young lady was still teaching there. We held in our original opinion that appellant only had the right to examine the witness concerning the facts upon which he based his conclusion concerning the general reputation of appellant, and having chosen to do so, and having drawn from the witness the incident detailed, he was not in a position to complain of the court in permitting appellee to develop the particulars- thereof. We then conceived, and do now, that such was the ruling in Freedman v. Bonner, 40 S. W. 47. In that case it is said by this court:
“The defendants,, on the original examination, only asked the witnesses Roberson and Gunn about the general reputation of McKinsey for truth and veracity in the neighborhood in which he lived or was best known; that the matters complained of were drawn out by plaintiffs’ counsel; and that defendants’ counsel only cross-examined the witnesses on the points thus drawn out. In such a case, while such matters were improper, and perhaps injurious, yet appellants have no ground of complaint.”
[8] Aside from the fact that the error, if any, was initially introduced into the case by appellant, there is eminent authority for holding that such testimony was properly admitted. Mr. Jones, in his work on Evidence (section 864), declares it is the right of the one sought to be impeached to have the truth known, and for that reason he is entitled on cross-examination to demand of the witness fully the source of his information, and it was in the exercise of that right that counsel :£or appellant required Morrison to state the incident concerning the teacher. The same author on the same subject declares in section 871 that:
“After a witness has been cross-examined the next stage in the proceeding is his re-examination by the party calling Mm. The object of this examination is to allow the witness to explain or qualify his statements made in the cross-examination, and to give the details of transactions concerning which he has been cross-examined, but which, during such cross-examination, he had no opportunity to explain. ‘The counsel has a right, upon such re-examination, to ask all questions which may be proper to draw forth an explanation of the sense and meaning of the expressions used by the witness on cross-examination, if they be in themselves doubtful, and also of the motive by which the witness was induced to use those expressions; but he has no right to go further and introduce matter, new in itself, and not suited to the purpose of explaining either the expressions or the motives of the witness.’ Within its proper scope reexamination is a right, and not merely discretionary.”
Thus, when appellant surrendered the witness to appellee, he had an admission from him that his opinion in part had been based upon a certain incident, and under the authority cited appellee was entitled to inquire into the details of that particular incident.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.