Vial v. Vial, 98

• Decision Date: 08 March 1963
• Docket Number: No. 98,98
• Citation: 369 Mich. 534,120 N.W.2d 249
• Parties: Alexander Burgess VIAL, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Mary Edna VIAL, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 249

120 N.W.2d 249

369 Mich. 534

Alexander Burgess VIAL, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Mary Edna VIAL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 98.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

March 8, 1963.

Carpenter, Harrington & Douvan, by Arthur E. Carpenter, Ann Arbor, for appellant.

Bonisteel & Bonisteel, Ann Arbor, for appellee.

Before the Entire Bench.

BLACK, Justice (for affirmance).

At conclusion of a long and thorough hearing the plaintiff husband was granted a decree of absolute divorce according to the prayer of his bill. The case is here on the defendant wife's appeal with no question raised save that of sufficiency of the proof as justifying such decreed divorce. All issues pertaining to child custody, ¹ alimony and property rights were adjusted and adjudged without apparent dissatisfaction.

This brings us to the point most earnestly stressed by the defendant wife; that if the acts and causes found below constituted legal grounds for divorce, such were legally excused because she was mentally ill when they were committed. Citing Gardner v. Gardner, 239 Mich. 306, 214 N.W. 133, defendant states this salient question:

'Does conduct of the defendant while she was suffering from mental illness diagnosed as schizophrenia constitute cruelty justifying the granting of a divorce on that ground?'

The chancellor's opinion consists of 13 printed pages and seems to have been the product of painstaking care. The controlling conclusion reached by him was that, although Mrs. Vial on several occasions had disclosed symptoms of mental disturbance, 'there have been numerous occasions over the years that she has been guilty of extreme and repeated cruelty--mental cruelty--to the plaintiff at periods when she was entirely lucid, in the opinion of the court.' Following such preambular declaration the opinion sets forth in detail the findings recorded in support thereof. No profit to bench and bar would stem from present rehash thereof. It is sufficient to say that same call for no animadversion here.

Concentrating her argument for reversal, defendant says that the chancellor substituted his judgment, 'as to the existence of mental illness and its influence upon the conduct of the defendant,' for 'the undisputed testimony of qualified psychiatrists.' If that is so, Judge Breakey nonetheless was not obliged to accept the opinions of defendant's psychiatrists as against that which was testified to factually and found by him. When the trier of an issue such as was framed below receives opinion testimony of mental incapacity or illness on the one hand, as against lay testimony of facts indicating knowledge of right, of wrong, of capacity and of fair understanding of the result and impact of emotional attitudes and changes thereof, there is no legal obligation to accept the former over the latter. If such were the rule no will would be entirely safe as against mere opinion testimony of mental incompetence. Indeed, no trier or triers of fact are bound to accept opinion testimony, however expert and authoritative, as they proceed to determine issues of fact duly committed to them for finding or verdict. The reason is that opinion testimony is not of the highest order since, as pointed out in McNally v. Colwell, 91 Mich. 527, 536, 52 N.W. 70, 73, 'a man's opinion cannot be met and tested, as could his testimony to the existence of a fact.' And see, in addition to McNally's general comment upon the comparably light weight of opinion testimony, Jones' complete treatment (2 Jones Blue Book of Evidence, §§ 390, 391, pp. 970-973) headed 'infirmity of expert testimony,' the text of which is in full accord with the modern weight of authority the reader will find collected in 86 A.L.R.2d 1038, 1044.

Aside...