Warren v. DeCoste
| Decision Date | 03 January 1930 |
| Citation | 269 Mass. 415,169 N.E. 505 |
| Parties | WARREN v. DECOSTE. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Report from Superior Court, Middlesex County; F. T. Hammond, Judge.
Action by Henry E. Warren, as administrator of the estate of Herbert N. Smith, deceased, against Michael H. Decoste. Motion to strike and require fuller answers to interrogatories was denied and case reported. Orders as to motions for further answers to interrogatories affirmed.Johnson, Clapp, Ives & Knight, Henry F. Knight, and William R. Cook, all of Boston, for plaintiff.
John F. McGrath, Francis T. Mullin, Henry C. Walsh, and John W. Ceaty, all of Worcester, for defendant.
This is an action of tort to recover compensation for the conscious suffering and damages for the death of the plaintiff's intestate alleged to have been caused to him while a pedestrian on a public way by the negligent operation of a motor vehicle by the defendant. Before trial report has been made of questions of law arising on orders concerning motions touching answers to interrogatories propounded by the defendant to the plaintiff. There was a large number of such interrogatories. The plaintiff declined to answer some of them. Thereupon the defendant filed a motion alleging certain answers to be improper, irrelevant, incomplete and evasive, and praying that certain answers be stricken out and that further and fuller answers be filed. This motion was allowed in part and denied in part. Further answers were made as ordered. The defendant thereupon filed a second motion of a similar tenor as to the answers to some interrogatories. This second motion was denied.
Statutory law as to interrogatories, G. L. c. 231, §§ 61-67, both inclusive, has been expounded somewhat fully in recent decisions. Cutter v. Cooper, 234 Mass. 307, 125 N. E. 634;Goldman v. Ashkins (Mass.) 165 N. E. 513. See Looney v. Saltonstall, 212 Mass. 69, 98 N. E. 698. That ground need not be traversed again. Summarily stated, so far as here material, these sections of the statute enable a party to interrogate his adversary to the same extent as would be permissible if he were called as a witness at the trial. The test in general as to the necessity of making answers to interrogatories is whether they are directed to obtain disclosure of facts admissible in evidence as to which the party interrogated could be required to testify as a witness. The interrogatories must be proper in form and designed to elicit facts within the knowledge of the party and admissible in evidence upon the issues raised by the pleadings. This statement is subject to limitations respecting relevant information obtainedthrough such inquiry of his agents, servants and attorneys as will enable the party ‘to make full and true answers to the interrogatories.’ That is required by section 62. To this extent a party may be required to state that which is hearsay and which he could not give as a witness testifying upon the trial. There is implicit in our decisions, as well as by the words of section 61, recognition of the principle that fundamental rules as to the admission and exclusion of evidence define and limit interrogatories save as otherwise expressly provided. This conclusion follows also from the terms of G. L. c. 231, § 89, that the ‘answers of a party to interrogatories filed may be read by the other party as evidence at the trial.’
Circumstances of the cause of action alleged are that the plaintiff's intestate at the time of the injury was about seventy-eight years old and survived about ninety days; that in this interval he was confined to his house and bed for a considerable period, treated for his injuries by a physician, and was able to go to his office only a few times.
Interrogatory six was in nature admonitory and precatory. It followed, it well might have disclosed the names of witnesses contrary to section 63. It was not cast in the form of a question. It required no answer.
A large group of the interrogatories was designed to adduce from the plaintiff a detailed statement of the manner in which the accident occurred, together with all its attendant conditions. The answer made by the plaintiff to each of these was in substance the same, to the effect that touching those facts he had no personal knowledge; that so far as he had been able to ascertain none of his agents, servants or attorneys had such personal knowledge, and such...
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Hite v. Hite
...applicable provision of G.L.(Ter.Ed.) c. 190, § 1, which defines her inheritable estate as one half on the realty. Warren v. Decoste, 269 Mass. 415, 419, 169 N.E. 505;Kelley v. Jordan Marsh Co., 278 Mass. 101, 110, 111, 179 N.E. 299. We cannot adopt a literal interpretation of c. 199, § 1, ......
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Hite v. Hite
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Kelley v. Jordan Marsh Co.
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