Blair v. Madison Cnty.
| Decision Date | 24 October 1890 |
| Citation | 81 Iowa 313,46 N.W. 1093 |
| Parties | BLAIR v. MADISON COUNTY. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from district court, Madison county; J. H. HENDERSON, Judge.
Action to recover for personal injuries to plaintiff from a fall from his horse, caused by a defect in the floor of a county bridge, over which plaintiff was at the time riding. There was a judgment on a verdict for plaintiff. Defendant appeals.Eli Wilkin, John Guiher, and John Leonard & Son, for appellant.
A. R. Dabney and T. C. Gilpin, for appellee.
1. The plaintiff, a young man, then 22 years of age, while riding over a county bridge, was thrown from his horse by reason of the animal stepping through a hole in the floor of the bridge. This action is brought to recover the damages he sustained from the injuries he thus received, which he claims were severe and permanent. The facts of the case will be stated so far as is necessary for a correct understanding of the questions involved, and the ground of the decision thereon in connection with the discussion of these questions.
2. The Carlisle Life Tables were admitted as evidence against objections made by defendant's counsel. It is now insisted that they should have been excluded for the reasons that “the evidence is clear and conclusive that there was no permanent injury.” But this view of the evidence is incorrect. The most that can be said on the point is that the evidence is conflicting. It was the province of the jury to settle the conflict. If they found that plaintiff's injury was permanent, the life tables were to be considered.
3. A physician who had just made an examination of plaintiff was asked whether his statement as to the injuries and his symptoms, and the absence of external appearance of injury, were “consistent with his medical books.” The question was objected to, on the ground that “the medical books are the best evidence of their contents.” The question does not call for evidence as to the contents of medical books. It, in effect, seeks the opinion of the witness, who, being a physician, was qualified to give it, upon the question whether the science of medicine which is taught in the medical books would authorize the conclusion that plaintiff could have the symptoms of which he complained, in the absence of “external appearances of injury;” or, in other words, whether, in his opinion as a medical man, the real symptoms would be manifest in the absence of external appearances of injury. The question sought to elicit an opinion upon a matter which the witness, as an expert, could properly express.
4. A witness was asked to state what complaint of pain or disease plaintiff made about a week after the accident. It is now insisted that, as plaintiff's complaints were no part of the res gestæ, they were not admissible. They were not admitted on that ground, but for the reason that his complaints of pain or disease were competent to show the condition of his health, which was in issue under his claim that he was severely and permanently injured. The statements or declarations of the plaintiff were properly shown in evidence. 1 Greenl. Ev. § 102.
5. Questions were asked a witness intended to elicit evidence as to statements made by a bridge builder in regard to the bridge, and as to the fact whether the bridge builder had made a report as to the sufficiency of the floors. Objections to the questions were sustained. It is not shown in the abstract what statements and facts were proposed to be proved by the evidence sought by the questions. It is therefore not shown that the proposed evidence is competent. In the absence of such showing, we are requested to exercise the presumption that the court rightly rejected the evidence upon information as to its purport showing it to be incompetent.
6. Counsel for the defendant insist that the evidence fails to show that plaintiff was injured at all by the accident; that he was not himself negligent; that it does show defendant had no notice of the defects...
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