Becker v. Philadelphia

Citations

• 217 Pa. 344
• 66 A. 564
• 1907 Pa. LEXIS 713

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Municipalities—Evidence—Record.</p> <p>In an action by a woman against a municipality to recover damages for personal injuries, the plaintiff claimed that she was suffering from a particular physical disturbance resulting from a fall which was the foundation of the action. The defendant claimed that about ten years prior to the accident plaintiff had sued a borough to recover for personal injuries, and that in the suit against the borough she had claimed and recovered damages for the same physical disturbance. The plaintiff denied that she had made any such claim in a prior suit. The city offered in evidence the record of the prior suit, and also as a witness, the stenographer who had taken the testimony in that suit, to show by his notes that a physician, since deceased, had testified on behalf of the plaintiff that she was suffering from the physical disturbance complained of in the second suit. The first suit was brought prior to the Act of May 8, 1895, P. L. 54, which requires that the rights of husband and wife should in cases of injuries to the wife be redressed in one action. It was objected to the admission of the testimony that as the husband in the later suit was claiming to recover in his own right, the record of the earlier suit, which was solely for the wife’s benefit, was res inter alios acta, and consequently not admissible. Held, that the objection was not well founded, inasmuch as the testimony was not offered to prove the substantive fact of the existence of the physical disturbance, but to contradict the plaintiff, and to show that she adopted the declarations and admission of the physician as her own.</p> <p>A record may be admitted in evidence in favor of a stranger against one of the parties, as containing a solemn admission, or judicial declaration by such party in record to a certain fact. But, in that ease, it is admitted not as a judgment conclusively establishing the fact, but as the deliberate declaration or admission of t