Matott v. Ward
| Decision Date | 29 November 1979 |
| Parties | , 399 N.E.2d 532 Lloyd MATOTT, Respondent, v. Charles L. WARD et al., Appellants. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
In the main, this appeal requires us to consider the question, vital to the trial process, of the certainty with which the opinion of an expert witness here a physician must be expressed for it to have probative force.
The issue arises in a negligence suit emanating from a collision in early 1973 between a police car driven by plaintiff Lloyd Matott, a Deputy Sheriff of St. Lawrence County, and the defendants' van. The plaintiff received a verdict at the hands of the jury, and the judgment entered thereon has since been affirmed by a closely divided Appellate Division.
Pertinent is the fact that Matott, who suffered orthopedic injuries in the impact, came under the care of an osteopathic physician, Dr. Lester Millard, who promptly embarked on a course of therapy that lasted for several months after the injuries were sustained. However, though Matott was to testify that he continued to experience pain and discomfort right up to the time of trial in 1977, he only visited the doctor intermittently in the intervening years. There was also proof that, on several of these occasions starting almost two years after the 1973 accident, he complained to Dr. Millard of new injuries to parts of his body affected by the original accident. Shortly before trial, the doctor conducted an examination to evaluate the residual condition. It is on Dr. Millard's trial testimony that the controversy now focuses.
Specifically, it turns on a line of questioning initiated by plaintiff's counsel to ascertain whether, in the doctor's opinion, the condition he found following the later occurrences was related to the original accident "with a Reasonable degree of medical certainty". After an interruption to dispose of an objection as to foundation, the court, perhaps intending merely to repeat the unanswered question, nevertheless altered it to say, "And are you in a position, Doctor, to give us an opinion, with A degree of medical certainty, as to whether this condition that you saw at this time was related to the first accident?" Before the witness could reply, the Judge continued, "Now, think about that, Doctor, Solely to the first accident and without any other accident intervening." To all this the witness responded, "I don't think I could say With certainty that it would be Solely due to the accident of March, 1973". (Emphasis ours.)
Undaunted by this seemingly unresponsive answer, after some attempts to clarify the distinction among various gradations of medical certainty and a rereading of the phraseology employed by the Trial Judge, counsel for the plaintiff himself fell back on that pattern, asking this time "could (we) have A degree of medical certainty that this was * * * causally related?" (Emphasis ours.) The witness thereupon volunteered that he had mistakenly assumed the Judge's earlier inquiry demanded absolute certainty, and he then proceeded to answer it, this time in the affirmative. Defense counsel registered no objection to the form of this testimony; indeed, his consent may be inferred from his earlier assumption that "there (is) no unreasonable degree of medical certainty".
As to the doctor, he did have an opportunity to respond directly to a question phrased in terms of a "reasonable" degree of medical certainty. This was when the interrogation turned to prognosis. He then was unequivocal in asserting that, in his opinion, Matott's condition was permanent.
It is this evidence that the two dissenters at the Appellate Division deemed insufficient to establish a causal relationship between the original accident and the physical disabilities of which the plaintiff still complained at the time of trial. While as one with the majority as to liability, they held to the view that the causal connection had to be established by testimony that bespoke "a reasonable degree of medical certainty" (66 A.D.2d 910, 411 N.Y.S.2d 210). On this appeal, here pursuant to CPLR 5601, we reach a different conclusion.
Generally speaking, a predicate for the admission of expert testimony is that its subject matter involve information or questions beyond the ordinary knowledge and experience of the trier of the facts. Moreover, the expert should be possessed of the requisite skill, training, education, knowledge or experience from which it can be assumed that the information imparted or the opinion rendered is reliable. (McCormick, Evidence (2d ed.), § 13; see, generally, § 10; Wigmore, Evidence, vol. 2, §§ 555-567; vol. 7, §§ 1917-1929; Richardson, Evidence (10th ed. Prince), §§ 366-368.)
There being no question but that the expert evidence was necessary and that the witness through whom it was provided in the present case was qualified, the court still had to ascertain whether, in opining as to causation and prognosis, Dr. Millard exhibited a degree of confidence in his conclusions sufficient to satisfy accepted standards of reliability. Granted that "a reasonable degree of medical certainty" is one expression of such a standard and is therefore commonly employed by sophisticates for that purpose, it is not, however, the only way in which a level of certainty that meets the rule may be stated. For, an overview of New York case law reveals that the requirement is not to be satisfied by a single verbal straightjacket alone, but, rather, by any formulation from which it can be said that the witness' "whole opinion" reflects an acceptable level of certainty (Martin, Uncertain Rule of Certainty, An Analysis and Proposal for a Federal Evidence Rule, 20 Wayne L.Rev. 781, 790). To be sure, this does not mean that the door is open to guess or surmise, and admittedly, "a degree of medical certainty", taken literally and without more, could very well be so characterized.
Yet, the need for flexibility is apparent from even the briefest consideration of the nature of medical opinions. Training in the inexact and continually expanding science of medical investigation implants in its initiates a reluctance to quantify their judgments as to cause and effect. Except insofar as one inescapably affects the other, the primary function of the average physician is to diagnose and treat the condition at hand rather than to determine precisely what extraneous factors influenced it. The emphasis is on the effect on antecedent physiological and psychological conditions; medical histories are almost always chronicles of the patient rather than the accident.
On the other hand, the approach of the lawyer, tutored in the art of resolving social problems and focusing on "proximate cause", "fault distribution" and the like, is quite different. In the identification of influences toward legal responsibility, his concern is whether tort and injury bear a close enough relationship to make it equitable to impose financial...
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