Worez v. Des Moines City Railway Co.

175 Iowa 1
CourtSupreme Court of Iowa
DecidedMarch 15, 1916
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 175 Iowa 1 (Worez v. Des Moines City Railway Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Worez v. Des Moines City Railway Co., 175 Iowa 1 (iowa 1916).

Opinion

Salinger, J.

1Evidence: memoranda: conditions of admissibility. I. The witness Lambert testified that, in the fall of 1910, he took the application of plaintiff for sickness and accident insurance; that the application was taken in duplicate; that plaintiff signed one and not the °ther; that the signed application was transmitted to the insurer in the state of New York, and that witness does not know where it now is. The witness produced the unsigned duplicate, and it is known in this record as Exhibit 1. It is written therein [7]*7that applicant had in the past had ‘ ‘ acute attacks of rheumatism at times, but not severe.” The witness says that these words are in his writing; that, when he prepared the blank, the plaintiff, as witness recalls, said that she had had at times attacks of rheumatism; that he made this written statement from what plaintiff said just before he made it, and wrote down her statement correctly as plaintiff stated it. Thereupon, defendant offered Exhibit 1 in connection with the testimony of this- witness, so far as it relates to said statement. We have to determine whether objections made to this testimony, and to this exhibit, that same are incompetent, immaterial and not the best evidence, were rightly overruled. We shall not attempt to follow the counsel into all the ramifications of their dispute on this point, but hold that the objections are not well made, because:

2' aná^econáary1 signed'and unranda!memo" 1. The testimony and the introduction of the paper was no attempt to prove by secondary evidence the contents of the signed paper sent to New York. It is all merely the equivalent of (1) testimony that plaintiff made statements as 1° the condition of her health prior t° the accident in suit, and that the witness, at the time the statement was made, correctly reduced it to a written memorandum; and (2) thereupon introducing said memorandum. In a general way, it is the equivalent of a memorandum made by a disinterested person before any controversy arose, which he knows he made truly at the time when he made it, because he ■ remembers what was said, and his thereupon testifying, independently of the writing, what was said. Neither the oral testimony nor the admission of this memorandum violated any rule as to best, or as to primary and secondary evidence. All was merely a method of showing what oral statements plaintiff had made as to her bodily condition at a timé before the acts of defendant injured her.

[8]*83. Evidence : bes.t and secondary evidence: evidence beyond jurisdiction of court. [7]*72. On any theory, the testimony was not objectionable, because the original Was outside of the jurisdiction and in the [8]*8state of New York, and not under the control of the party offering it, and because the party who had the original is not a party to the suit.

As we read it, the text.in 17 Cye. 527, militates against, rather than helps, the position of appellant. It declares fairly that, where a paper is out of the jurisdiction, the ordinary rules as to .secondary evidence do not govern. Hawkins v. Rice, 40 Iowa 435, merely holds that a written assignment cannot be established by parol upon a showing that the instrument had been sent to the clerk for record and not returned, because such assignment is still constructively in the possession of the assignee; and Grimes v. Simpson Centenary College, 42 Iowa, at 590, applies said ordinary rules because there was no positive and direct evidence showing where it was or who had the contract at the time of the trial, or that it was lost or mislaid. We think Adams v. Coulliard, 102 Mass. 167, 173, squarely sustains the trial court.

Kennell v. Boyer, 144 Iowa, at 306, is that memoranda made in a transaction where the maker acts as agent for both parties are admissible. Donovan v. Boston & M. R. Co., (Mass.) 33 N. E. 583, 584, holds memoranda are admissible where there is no reasonable possibility that they were intentionally made incorrect; where made by one acting in the line of: duty and in the usual course of employment, under conditions which .tended to make the entry correct; made before any controversy had arisen, and when all concerned had no interest other than to. know and state the truth. According to Inhabitants of Townsend v. Inhabitants of Pepperell, 99 Mass. 40, on issue of the insanity of a patient during a certain period, ,a record of his condition and treatment as a patient in a hospital, .produced at a trial 40 years after its date by the superintemlent of-the hospital as part of a series of records of which he is the official custodian, purporting to be contemporaneously made by the.attending physicians, and which it is their.duty .to make, is admissible .in evidence as a-foundation for the [9]*9opinion of an expert whether it indicates mental disease of the patient, without identifying the person who made it. State v. Brady, 100 Iowa 191, 200, decides that, in a prosecution for embezzlement from a railroad corporation,’ memoranda consisting of the records of its ticket office, showing daily sales there during a given year, should be admitted, where it is conceded that the agent could not know from memory the facts stated in the memorandum, and are admissible as substantive evidence under the same circumstances as if a witness said he knew they were true when made, but had no independent recollection either before or after examining them as to the sales to which they refer. In Graham v. Dillon, 144 Iowa 82, we hold that, if a witness can testify that at or about the time a memorandum or entry was made he knew its contents, and knew it to be true, his testimony and the memorandum are both competent evidence, although the witness cannot testify to the facts as a matter of independent recollection, even after his memory has been refreshed. And see Edwards v. City of Cedar Rapids, 138 Iowa, at 423, 424.

4' SSncyfmatei-l petency: íogical connection. II. As we view it, the only material testimony given by the witness Lambert was that the duplicate, Exhibit 1, truly states something which the plaintiff told the witness. Plaintiff was allowed to contradict this by stating that she was never, in fact, afflicted with rheumatism, and that she did not tell him that she had suffered acute attacks-of rheumatism, but that they were not severe ones. It is complained that she was not also permitted to say that the duplicate was not a true copy of the signed application. Whether it was or not is material and relevant to nothing before the court when this testimony was excluded. Whether the signed application sent ■to New York did or did not contain this statement as to rheu'matism had no bearing on whether such declaration as the witness wrote into the duplicate was made. That witness made this written ’meiñórandum in but one paper, rather than in two, did not affect the material portions of his testimony.

[10]*102.

5' o£court°°ob“ct witness’s knowledge. In sustaining objection to this, the judge said that he did not know how the plaintiff may know whether this statement is contained in the original, the original not being in court. We do not agree to the claim that this not only excluded the proposed testimony but discredited and destroyed evidence put m earlier.

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175 Iowa 1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/worez-v-des-moines-city-railway-co-iowa-1916.