New York Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor

• Decision Date: 08 May 1944
• Docket Number: No. 8488.,8488.
• Citation: 147 F.2d 297,79 US App. DC 66
• Parties: NEW YORK LIFE INS. CO. v. TAYLOR.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

79 US App. DC 66, 147 F.2d 297 (1944)

NEW YORK LIFE INS. CO. v. TAYLOR.

No. 8488.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia.

Argued March 14, 1944.

Decided May 8, 1944.

Argued on Rehearing October 3, 1944.

Decided January 10, 1945.

Mr. R. Aubrey Bogley, of Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Frederic D. McKenney, John Spalding Flannery, G. Bowdoin Craighill, and John R. Wall, all of Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellant.

Mr. Lowry N. Coe, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.

Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and EDGERTON and ARNOLD, Associate Justices.

ARNOLD, Associate Justice.

This is an action brought on a life insurance policy to recover double indemnity under a provision making such double indemnity payable if the death of the insured resulted from "bodily injury effected solely through external, violent and accidental causes."¹

The insured was killed while a patient at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D. C., by a fall down a stair well which was protected by a railing. The fall occurred at night and there were no witnesses. The circumstances indicated possible suicide. The jury gave a verdict for double indemnity under the policy. Defendant appeals from a judgment on that verdict.

The first error claimed is that the trial court excluded the statement of a physician which was part of the proofs of death required to be furnished by the beneficiary. The statement contained the opinion that the insured committed suicide.

The trial court excluded the statement of opinion as to suicide after concluding from the record that the beneficiary had not authorized the submission of such a statement to the insurance company. It appeared that the insurance company had sent the physician (who was also the coroner) the form, which he had filled in. This was at the request of the beneficiary. But the court concluded that the beneficiary had not seen the physician's statement before it was transmitted to the company. It appeared that representatives of the company had assisted the beneficiary in completing the proofs of death, and had not called her attention to the fact that the physician's opinion as to suicide was inconsistent with her own statement that the death was accidental. It also appeared that the physician who made the statement had no personal knowledge of the cause of death. While the record as to all these circumstances is not clear, counsel for appellant failed to deny any of the court's conclusions of fact during the argument on the admissibility of the evidence.

On the basis of its conclusions of fact the court's ruling was correct. Ordinarily a statement by a physician submitted by the beneficiary of a policy as part of the proofs of death is admissible to show the manner of death.² Its admissibility is based on the fact that the beneficiary whose duty it is to furnish the proofs of death must be presumed to have authorized the statements made in those proofs. If later at the trial she takes a position inconsistent with the proofs of death which she has submitted those statements are admissible as her representations. As the Supreme Court said in the case of Mutual Life Ins. Co. of Newark, N. J. v. Newton,³:

"* * * the proofs presented were admissible as representations on the part of the party for whose benefit the policies were taken, as to the death and the manner of the death of the insured. They were presented to the company in compliance with the condition of the policy requiring notice and proof of the death of the insured as preliminary to the payment of the insurance money. They were intended for the action of the company, and upon their truth the company had a right to rely. Unless corrected for mistake, the insured was bound by them. Good faith and fair dealing required that she should be held to representations deliberately made until it was shown that they were made under a misapprehension of the facts, or in ignorance of material matters subsequently ascertained."

It is apparent from the above opinion that proofs of death are competent evidence of the cause of death only where the relevant statements contained therein are authorized by the beneficiary.⁴ The fact that the beneficiary submitted the proofs to the insurance company creates a presumption that the statements were authorized. But here the evidence on the voir dire rebuts that presumption. The statements of the physician, who had no personal knowledge of the accident, were inconsistent with the statement of the beneficiary, so that there is a normal inference that they were not called to her attention. Insurance companies engaging in the laudable practice of assisting beneficiaries in making out proofs of death should call attention to inconsistencies in the proofs if they expect later to use them against the person they are assisting on the theory that she was consciously adopting or authorizing a statement that contradicted her own report.

Appellant contends that the court erred in permitting plaintiff to introduce the claimant's statement and the friend's statement, which were part of the proofs of death, without offering the physician's statement. This was error because the proofs of death, if admitted at all, should have gone in as a whole. But the error was not prejudicial because the admitted proofs of death contained nothing which added to the testimony beyond the fact that the plaintiff had not changed her position. It is hardly possible that this affected the verdict.

The second ground of error is the refusal of the trial court to admit in evidence the original records of Walter Reed General Hospital relating to the cause of the death of the insured. These records consisted of the following documents: (1) A history of the insured's admission to the hospital giving an account of his illness and his state of mind; (2) A diagnosis of insured's condition when he was admitted; (3) Reports on three operations performed in the hospital; (4) Reports of conversations with the insured indicating that he had attempted suicide; (5) Report of consultation with a psychiatrist containing statements by the insured that he wished to die; (6) Report of a psychiatrist showing a diagnosis of "psychoneurosis, hysteria, conversion type"; (7) Transcript of the proceedings and findings of the Board of Officers of Walter Reed General Hospital to determine the cause of the death of the insured.

The policy contained a waiver⁵ of any privilege⁶ against the disclosure of information acquired through confidential treatment by physicians. We believe that it was a sufficient waiver of the privilege provided in Section 14 — 308 of the District of Columbia Code. Therefore, these records, or at least a large portion of them, would have been admissible in connection with the testimony of the witnesses to the events or opinions contained in the reports. However, had such witnesses been called they would have been subject to cross-examination. The question here is whether these records are admissible in the absence of direct testimony, under the so-called Federal Shop Book Rule,⁷ which reads as follows:

"In any court of the United States and in any court established by Act of Congress, any writing or record, whether in the form of an entry in a book or otherwise, made as a memorandum or record of any act, transaction, occurrence, or event, shall be admissible as evidence of said act, transaction, occurrence, or event, if it shall appear that it was made in the regular course of any business, and that it was the regular course of such business to make such memorandum or record at the time of such act, transaction, occurrence, or event or within a reasonable time thereafter. * * *"

A literal reading of the above statute would make the records in this case admissible on the theory that the business of operating a hospital requires records of the histories of patients, reports of unusual conduct and also diagnoses by physicians. But the Supreme Court in Palmer v. Hoffman,⁸ has, we believe, limited the admission of records under the Federal Shop Book Rule statute to those which are trustworthy because they represent routine reflections of day-to-day operations. The opinion in that case holds that the statute is not one "which opens wide the door to avoidance of cross-examination."

In this case the records are not offered to prove routine facts such as the date of admission to the hospital, the names of the attending physicians, etc. They are offered to prove the truth of accounts of events and of complicated medical and psychiatric diagnoses. The accuracy of such accounts is affected by bias, judgment, and memory; they are not the routine product of an efficient clerical system. There is here lacking any internal check on the reliability of the records in this respect, such as that provided for "payrolls, accounts receivable, accounts payable, bills of lading and the like." The Supreme Court has stated that the test of admissibility must be "the character of the records and their earmarks of reliability * * * acquired from their source and origin and the nature of their compilation."⁹ To admit a narrative report of an event, or a conversation, or a diagnosis, as a substitute for oral testimony, is to give any large organization the right to use self-serving statements without the important test of cross-examination. Cross-examination is unimportant in a case of systematic routine entries made by a large organization where skill of observation or judgment is not a factor. We believe that Palmer v. Hoffman restricts the application of the Federal Shop Book Rule statute to that type of business entries.

In Palmer v. Hoffman the record sought to be introduced was a report of a railway accident which was required by the rules of the railroad. Its exclusion was affirmed. While the case may be technically distinguished we think it stands for the general principle we have outlined above and that the rule of the...