Court Opinion

ID: 9736353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:53:29.695827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:06.115516
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice O’Brien :
Hospital records are admissible as exceptions to the hearsay rule on the question of medical damages, even though the entrant cannot be cross-examined because, *109in the words of the Uniform Business Records as Evidence Act, Act of May 4, 1939, P. L. 42, §2, 28 P.S. 91(b), “the sources of information, method and time of preparation [are] such as to justify its admission.” However, the statement that the child ran between parked cars is not concerned with the patient’s health. Instead, it concerns the question of liability, which is none of the hospital’s “professional” business. As we explained in Commonwealth v. Harris, 351 Pa. 325, 330, 41 A. 2d 688 (1945) : “Certainly every ‘act, condition or event’ which some hospital physician places in a hospital record does not ipso facto become competent when later an issue is being judicially tried to which such fact would be relevant if proved by competent testimony. The Act of 1939 obviously means that the ‘act, condition or event’ recorded in the hospital must be pathologically germane to the physical or mental condition which caused the patient to come to the hospital for treatment.” (Emphasis in original.) See also Incollingo v. Ewing, 444 Pa. 263, 282 A. 2d 206 (1971), Fauceglia v. Harry, 409 Pa. 155, 185 A. 2d 598 (1962).
The fact that it was appellants who offered the records into evidence does not change the situation. Counsel should not be faced with the choice of either offering the records for all purposes, including illegitimate ones, or not offering them at all.
The trial court’s opinion expresses the belief that the statement that the “boy ran between two parked cars,” even if improperly admitted, was not prejudicial because appellants had requested and the court had charged that: “. . . [T]he driver of a motor vehicle has the duty, where a young child or children are observable at the side of a highway, to exercise a high degree of care to avoid striking a child who may dart into the street, or otherwise suddenly find himself before the *110auto in a position of peril, in view of the well known tendency of children to so act.”
I do not agree with the trial court. The requested point for charge, which the court properly accepted, described a fact situation significantly different from that described in the hospital records. In the appellants’ description of the accident, Jeffrey is observable at the side of the highway before he darts into the street. In the description from the undisclosed source quoted in the hospital records, Jeffrey darts from between two parked cars and is, therefore, not observable before he darts. Consequently, such a description is highly prejudicial to the appellants’ case and its admission warrants a new trial.
I further disagree with the majority’s view on the question of the police officer’s diagram. It was appellants’ contention that whether Jeffrey came from the right or the left side of the street, he must have been in the roadway for a sufficient time for the appellees’ truck driver to have seen him and avoided him in the exercise of due care. Since there were no eyewitnesses other than the driver and Jeffrey, the appellants based their case on circumstantial evidence, including the distance of the skid marks from the cars parked to the driver’s right and other measurements made at the scene by Sergeant Shenk of the Lancaster Police Department. To illustrate Ms testimony, the sergeant began to use a diagram which he had prepared as part of his investigation. The appellees objected to such use on the ground that the diagram was not drawn to scale and the objection was sustained, quite properly. The appellants then offered a map of the scene which was drawn to scale. This was also objected to by the appellees. The court sustained the objection because it felt that the diagram contained the same inaccuracies which were disclosed to be in the nonscale diagram by *111the cross-examination which had occurred at the first trial and because the evidence contained in the diagram was “at best cumulative and already in the record in the officer’s direct verbal testimony and photographs.”
I disagree with the trial court. The officer’s testimony as to his measurements was difficult to understand and appreciate without the aid of a diagram. Photographs of the scene, taken from different perspectives, could be of little aid to the jury in grasping the significance, if any, of the officer’s figures. If the diagram was drawn to scale and accurately depicted the officer’s measurements, then it should have been admitted into evidence. The court’s failure to do so unfairly made the appellants’ presentation of their case much more difficult.
I dissent and would reverse the judgment below and grant a new trial.