Nelson v. Boston & M.R. Co.
| Decision Date | 08 January 1892 |
| Citation | 155 Mass. 356,29 N.E. 586 |
| Parties | NELSON v. BOSTON & M.R. CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
R.M. Morse and W.P. Stafford, for plaintiff.
S Lincoln and T. Hunt, for defendant.
All of the exceptions in this case relate to the exclusion of evidence. For the purpose of showing the amount of the plaintiff's income from his professional practice in former years, the defendant offered to put in evidence the returns made by the plaintiff to the listers or assessors under a statute of Vermont, during the period in question. These returns were required to be under oath, in the form of an inventory showing in detail all of the property and estate of the affiant, including debts due or to become due him. But the amount of his property, or of the debts due him, at any particular time would have no tendency to show what had been his professional income during the preceding year, and the evidence was rightly excluded.
The testimony of Dr. Stiles and of Dr. Nelson, which was offered was merely the opinions of witnesses as to the amount of the plaintiff's practice, as compared with that of respectable physicians generally in the neighborhood where he lived, and as to the cash value of his practice for a term of years. Neither of the witnesses had any knowledge of the amount of his practice, except from seeing him on the streets about his business, and by hearsay, in a general way, the same as they had of that of other physicians in the town. The amount of the practice or of the income of a particular physician is not a subject for expert testimony, but can only be testified to by one who has knowledge of it. The usual fees charged by physicians for particular kinds of service may well be stated by persons familiar with the subject, and what is a reasonable charge for a given case may be proved as a matter of opinion by expert testimony. But how much business a particular physician is doing, and how much he is receiving for it, are specific facts, of which another may or may not have knowledge. Seeing a physician going about the streets, and hearing of cases of sickness in which he is called, and receiving general statements in regard to the amount of his business from those who have no definite knowledge about it, are not equivalent to knowledge. They are no more than hearsay which might be made the foundation of a conjecture more or less wide of the...
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