Court Opinion

ID: 9724183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:48:02.724941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:57.144439
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from the result reached by the majority and from the reasoning upon which it is based.
It seems clear that without the testimony of the witness Hankins, plaintiff would have failed to make out a jury case. The trial court sustained defendant’s motion for directed verdict after first striking all of Hankins’ testimony. Therefore, the decisive issue in the case is the propriety of the trial court’s ruling in excluding Han-kins’ testimony and in refusing admissibility of the exhibits upon which it was based. In both instances, I think the court was right.
The ruling which excluded the exhibits was in response to a motion which pointed out there was no showing the exhibits were in the same condition when examined by the witness Hankins as they were immediately after the accident. The merit of this objection is beyond argument on the record before us. The accident occurred in 1967. The exhibits were delivered to Hankins in 1971, two weeks before trial. From an examination of the exhibits, Han-kins, a mechanic whose general qualifications are not disputed, undertook to advance a theory which ascribed the accident to a defective steering mechanism. However, in the long interval between the accident and Hankins’ examination of the exhibits, they had been in the possession of one Professor Wardle at the Iowa State University. He, too, made tests, but he was not used as a witness at the trial of the case.
There is no showing in the record as to the condition of these exhibits when they were delivered to Wardle, how long he had them, whether he made any changes in them during his examination and testing, or whether they were in the same condition when returned as when delivered.
In fact, plaintiff, the only person who undertook to establish a foundation for the *576admission of the exhibits, although first testifying to some of these circumstances eventually admitted there was no way he could tell the condition of the exhibits at the critical times.
I submit there is no authority for permitting the introduction of exhibits which, for all practical purposes, are decisive of important litigation when there is no showing that the exhibits are authentic and when the evidence affirmatively discloses they have been lying around various homes and offices for more than four years with no protective measures to assure their integrity at trial.
I think the failure to produce Professor Wardle as a witness in order to furnish, if he could, this vital information is fatal to plaintiff’s attempt to use the exhibits and the testimony of Hankins.
Neither can I agree that defendants are without a remedy here because they failed to make timely objection. I believe they did and that it went to the very point— failure to account for the condition of the exhibits — upon which the trial court excluded the exhibits and struck out Hankins’ testimony. Defendants are not required to make repeated objections to the same kind of evidence in order to preserve their record. 'See State v. Evans, 193 N.W.2d 515, 518 (Iowa 1972).
The majority also discounts the motion to strike Hankins’ testimony at the conclusion of plaintiff’s case as too general to be considered here. Contrary to the majority’s statement, defendants did not move to strike all of Hankins’ testimony. The motion asked only that the portion relating to the challenge exhibits be stricken. The exhibits had by then been excluded and the objection, limited as it was to them, was clearly sufficiently definite and specific.
We have often said the introduction of expert testimony lies largely within the discretion of the trial court. Heth v. Iowa City, 206 N.W.2d 299, 302 (Iowa 1973); Fischer, Inc. v. Standard Brands, Inc., 204 N.W.2d 579, 582 (Iowa 1973); Wolf v. Murrane, 199 N.W.2d 90, 96 (Iowa 1972). Under the record now before us, I am at a loss to see how that “broad discretion” mentioned in Wolf v. Murrane has been abused.
I would affirm the trial court.
MOORE, C. J., and MASON, J., join this dissent.