McGuire v. Vill. of Caledonia
| Decision Date | 03 May 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 20718.,20718. |
| Citation | 140 Minn. 151,167 N.W. 425 |
| Parties | McGUIRE v. VILLAGE OF CALEDONIA. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Houston County; Nathan H. Kingsley and S. D. Catherwood, Judges.
Action by Anna McGuire against the Village of Caledonia. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court
A trial court may properly require a party to produce in court an article which has probable value as evidence.
It is not necessary to establish its admissibility before production in court.
The language used by the court in ordering defendant to produce a paving plank in its possession was not prejudicial.
Ordinarily, it is proper to examine a claimant in a personal injury case as to the fact of having made previous claims for injuries. No prejudice is apparent from restriction of such inquiry in this case. Other limitations on cross-examination are considered and held not error.
The question of contributory negligence was properly submitted to the jury. Duxbury & Duxbury, of Caledonia, for appellant.
W. A. Deters, of Caledonia, and W. S. Hart, of Waukon, Iowa, for respondent.
Plaintiff recovered damages for an injury received while walking on a wooden crosswalk in the village of Caledonia. Defendant appeals.
The evidence sustains the verdict. There is testimony of disinterested witnesses that there was a hole in the walk, due to decay, that defendant had notice of the defect, that plaintiff's foot was caught in this hole and that she fell and sustained a fracture of the cuboid bone of her left foot. The errors assigned relate to procedure at the trial.
1. After the accident the street commissioner of the village took the decayed plank into his custody. On the trial, plaintiff, after seasonable notice, asked the court to require defendant to produce it. The court first ordered it produced in a room adjacent to the courtroom for the inspection of plaintiff and her counsel, after which it was again taken away. Later the court ordered it brought into court and it was brought in and received in evidence. We have no hesitation in sustaining this order. We think, in fact, the court was unduly cautious in the limitations of his first order.
We are aware that the early common-law rules as to compulsion of testimony were very narrow. A party could not be compelled to testify or to produce evidence of any kind. A New York judge, in comparatively recent years, in an action for breach of warranty on sale of a watch, refused to require the plaintiff on the stand to produce the watch though he had it in his pocket, and the Supreme Court sustained the ruling with the remark that any such practice ‘would be a new feature in our jurisprudence.’ Hunter v. Allen, 35 Barb. (N. Y.) 42. Such reasons have prompted Mr. Wigmore to ask:
‘Were the judges of Charles II or George III, who themselves were but the followers of six centuries of royal judges, the last generation, vested with the authority to apply old principles in new forms?’ 3 Wigmore, Ev. § 2194.
It is the duty of the trial judge to facilitate the production of all evidence calculated to furnish the jury with a basis for intelligent action. He may now require parties to testify. He may subject their real property to view by the jury. He may require production of their private documents and of the private documents of witnesses who have no interest in the quarrel. He may, in proper cases, even subject the person of a party to examination. Surely then he may require a party to produce a common paving plank, if it have probable value as evidence. See Banks v. Conn. Ry. & Lighting Co., 79 Conn. 116, 64 Atl. 14;Reynolds v. Fiber Co., 71 N. H. 332, 51 Atl. 1075,57 L. R. A. 949, 93 Am. St. Rep. 535. Privilege may attach to some articles but none attaches to a paving plank.
2. The claim is made that it had not been shown that the plank was in the same condition as when it had been taken from the walk. Often questions of admissibility of the article in evidence can better be determined after it is produced than before. In case of documents, the court does not determine their admissibility in evidence in advance of their production. The same practice should apply to articles. This article was finally found to be proper evidence. It would be a strange result if we should now hold that it was error to order its production until after this was determined.
[3] 3. Exception is taken to the alleged ‘prejudicial’ remarks of the court in the presence of the jury when the court ordered the plank brought in. Plaintiff's attorney examined several...
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