Edwards v. Didericksen

• Decision Date: 27 June 1979
• Docket Number: No. 15780,15780
• Citation: 597 P.2d 1328
• Parties: Dennis Ray EDWARDS, a Minor, by and through his Guardian ad Litem, Edward Edwards, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Ann Beard DIDERICKSEN, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

Page 1328

597 P.2d 1328

Dennis Ray EDWARDS, a Minor, by and through his Guardian ad Litem, Edward Edwards, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Ann Beard DIDERICKSEN, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 15780.

Supreme Court of Utah.

June 27, 1979.

Reed M. Richards and Maurice Richards of Richard, Caine & Richards, Ogden, for plaintiff and appellant.

D. Gary Christian and James R. Blakesley of Kipp & Christian, Salt Lake City, for defendant and respondent.

STEWART, Justice:

Plaintiff brings this appeal from a jury verdict finding that the defendant was not negligent in connection with a two car automobile collision which caused injury to the plaintiff, who was a guest in the car driven by his brother. The evidence as to liability was in conflict, and especially as to the cause of the collision. However, plaintiff does not claim that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict. Plaintiff's only claim of error is that the trial court erred in an evidentiary ruling which plaintiff contends was critical. Specifically, plaintiff asserts that:

The trial court's failure to allow into the evidence the opinion of the investigating officer as to the cause of the accident was an abuse of discretion and prejudicial error.

The officer who investigated the accident had worked with the Highway Patrol since 1974. He had received training in accident investigation at a police academy, at Weber State College, and in a one-week course in advanced accident investigation. At trial he testified to what he saw and did in the course of his investigation. He testified, Inter alia, to the length and location of the skid marks, the speed of the automobiles, the point of impact, the direction travelled by the automobiles, and various other facts and inferences. Pictures of the scene of the accident and of the vehicles were also admitted into evidence. At the conclusion of the investigating officer's direct examination, the following took place:

Q. (By plaintiff's attorney) . . . From the information that you have, your independent investigation, talking with the witnesses, observing the situation, have you reached an opinion, have you formed an opinion as to what the cause of this accident was?

A. Yes.

Q. And would you give us that opinion?

MR. CHRISTIAN: I object to that, your Honor.

THE COURT: Sustained.

The plaintiff argues that the officer's opinion was erroneously excluded. Plaintiff contends that the opinion should have been allowed pursuant to Rule 56 of the Utah Rules of Evidence and pursuant to several Utah cases.

Rule 56 in pertinent part provides as follows:

(2) If the witness is testifying as an expert, testimony of the witness in the form of opinions or inferences is limited to such opinions as the judge finds are (a) based on facts or data perceived by or personally known or made known to the witness at the hearing and (b) within the scope of the special knowledge, skill, experience or training possessed by the witness.

(4) Testimony in the form of opinions or inferences otherwise admissible under these rules is not objectionable because it embraces the ultimate issue or issues to be decided by the trier of the fact.

Rule 56 expressly provides that the opinion of an expert is admissible, even though it "embraces the ultimate issues." This rule comports with common sense and is designed to assist the jury in deciding difficult issues of fact. It makes little sense to permit an expert to testify to the underlying facts of a situation and to certain intermediate type inferences which can reasonably be drawn from those facts and then prevent the expert from informing the jury what the mass of detail previously testified to ultimately means. The opinion rule should facilitate jury understanding, not frustrate it. To leave an expert's ultimate conclusion undisclosed is to require the jury to speculate as to what conclusion or conclusions the technical facts logically support. A rule precluding opinions on ultimate issues also deprives the jury of an expert's evaluation as to the degree of certainty that ought to be accorded such conclusions, assuming the jury correctly ascertains what the expert's conclusion is, without its being stated. Moreover, it is highly likely that the jury may not be made aware of the qualifications to which the conclusion ought to be subject if the conclusion is not made explicit and cross-examination founded directly on the conclusion. In short, exclusion of an opinion as to an ultimate issue invites misunderstanding, confusion in the jurors' minds that may not be detectable or correctable, and even possible error, and not infrequently as to critical points.

On the other hand, by allowing the testimony, the jury is directly informed of what the basic facts and intermediate inferences add up to. The jury is not required to speculate in an area in which it is not as knowledgeable as the expert. The necessary qualifications that should be imposed on the opinion, its potential limitations, and the degree of probability the opinion warrants, can be explained by the expert to the jury. Indeed these matters can only be fully and effectively explored on direct and cross-examination if the opinion is directly stated. Accurate fact finding is enhanced by such a process, and unnecessary and improper jury speculation is avoided. The old shibboleth that an expert should not be permitted to invade the province of the jury has been largely displaced by recognition that opinions, if based on an adequate foundation, are helpful and that the powerful tool of cross-examination and the jury's good judgment are sufficient to place the opinion in proper perspective.

Three cases decided by this Court prior to the promulgation of Rule 56 embody the basic principles laid down in that rule. Stagmeyer v. Leatham Bros., Inc., 20 Utah 2d 421, 439 P.2d 279 (1968); Joseph v. W. H. Groves Latter Day Saints Hospital, 7 Utah 2d 39, 318 P.2d 330 (1957); and Hooper v. General Motors Corp., 123 Utah 515, 260 P.2d 549 (1953). In Joseph this Court stated (7 Utah 2d at 45, 318 P.2d at 334):

. . . Whether the testimony of an expert is as to "the very issue before the jury" is not a proper test as to its admissibility. Where the subject of inquiry is in a field beyond the knowledge generally possessed by laymen, one properly qualified therein may be permitted to testify to his opinion as an expert. If in the opinion evidence is such that it will aid the jury in understanding their problems and lead them to the truth as to disputed issues of fact, it is competent and admissible, irrespective of whether it bears directly upon the ultimate fact the jury is to determine.

Even more to the point is this Court's language in Hooper (123 Utah at 521, 260 P.2d at 552):

. . . Without determining whether the fact upon which Mr. Harris gave his opinion was properly characterized as "ultimate" we look to the fact itself. We are of the opinion that within the realm of his knowledge an expert may express an opinion as to what did cause a particular occurrence or condition and in so testifying his opinion may be cast in the form of "what did" cause, as well as "what might" or "what could" have caused a particular occurrence or condition, depending upon the degree of positiveness the witness desires to give his opinion.

Macshara v. Garfield, 20 Utah 2d 152, 434 P.2d 756 (1967), is an aberration from the above principles. In that case, this Court sustained a trial court's refusal to admit testimony of a police officer reconstructing "the accident and the speed and direction of the vehicles on the basis of such physical evidence" as the damage to the automobiles, gouge marks on the lawn and curbing, and the course the automobiles took after impact (20 Utah 2d at 154, 434 P.2d at 757). The court stated that "(t)he disallowance of the evidence was in conformity with the rule that such an opinion is not admissible if a layman of ordinary intelligence can just as well interpret the evidence as the experts" (Id. at 154, 434 P.2d at 757).

Although the court enunciated a proper formulation of the rule governing expert testimony, that rule was not properly applied in the circumstances of the case. To contend that the jury in such a case would not benefit from the opinion of one trained to reconstruct accidents based upon physical evidence remaining from a collision and that the jury is as capable of drawing the most reasonable conclusions from that evidence as is a trained officer, is not realistic. That, of course, is not to say that the jury, with its own common sense, and the assistance of penetrating cross-examination, cannot adequately evaluate that opinion in light of alternative explanations, the degree to which the opinion reasonably follows from the facts, and all other relevant considerations.

Macshara relied on Day v. Lorenzo Smith & Son, Inc., 17 Utah 2d 221, 408...