Karasek v. Bockus

• Decision Date: 31 January 1936
• Citation: 293 Mass. 371
• Parties: BETTY S. KARASEK v. CURTIS L. BOCKUS.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

293 Mass. 371

BETTY S. KARASEK v. CURTIS L. BOCKUS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

January 31, 1936

January 7, 1936.

Present: RUGG, C.

J., CROSBY, FIELD LUMMUS, & QUA, JJ.

Evidence Competency, Of criminal proceedings. Practice, Civil Exceptions: whether error harmful.

At the trial of an action for personal injuries suffered by the plaintiff through a collision of automobiles, in which the identity of the defendant with the driver of the colliding vehicle was in issue, it was error harmful to the defendant to allow the plaintiff, without production of a record of conviction or evidence of the defendant's having pleaded guilty, after eliciting from the defendant that he had been the defendant in a criminal prosecution involving the same collision, to ask him whether he had paid a fine, to which he answered that he had paid a certain sum to his lawyer and had been told "that would square the case"; and the error was not cured by an instruction to the jury that the criminal prosecution was not evidence of the defendant's liability.

TORT. Writ dated January 21, 1931. The action was tried in the Superior Court before F. T. Hammond, J. There was a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $4,100. The defendant alleged exceptions.

Hubert C. Thompson (W. Cook with him,) for the defendant. H. Loewenberg, for the plaintiff.

LUMMUS, J. The plaintiff was injured in New Hampshire when the right rear corner of a passing automobile grazed the left front of her own and she lost control. Possibly the operator of the passing automobile was ignorant of the collision. An important question was the identification of the defendant with that operator.

The defendant testified in his own defence that he was on the road but knew of no collision. The cross-examining counsel, who had no record of conviction of the defendant, drew from him testimony that a criminal case against him involving the same alleged collision had come before the Superior Court of New Hampshire. The cross-examiner was allowed to ask him whether he pleaded guilty to reckless driving, and the defendant answered, "No." Although no plea of guilty to any offence, much less any specified offence, was shown, the cross-examiner, over the exception of the defendant, was allowed to ask him whether he paid a fine on that occasion and to obtain the answer that he paid his lawyer $25, and was told that "that would square the case." The verdict was for the plaintiff.

The reception of that evidence cannot be justified on the theory that the payment was an unimportant consequence of a plea of guilty that might constitute an admission of negligence. Commonwealth v. Fortier, 258...