Raynor v. Metropolitan Street Railway Co.

Citations

• 106 A.D. 449
• 94 N.Y.S. 632
• 1905 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2606

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — evidence that the party's condition might have been caused hy the injury or that the injury was sufficient to cause it is insufficient.</p> <p>In an action brought to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff, it appeared that the plaintiff was thrown from one of the defendant’s cars into the street, striking her head and sustaining a flesh wound; that over two months after the accident she gave birth to a child and was in labor longer than the normal period; that it was necessary to use forceps in delivering the child. The physician who attended her at the time of her confinement testified that the prolonged labor was due to the weakened condition of the muscles and nerves of the womb and abdominal wall. He enumerated a variety of causes which might result in the condition in which he found the plaintiff at the time of the birth of the child. He was then asked, “Can you say' with reasonable certainty, then, whether or not this wound in the head caused these particular injuries,” to which the witness replied, “Not with reasonable certainty, no sir.”</p> <p>Beld, that after the doctor had testified that he could not state with reasonable certainty whether or not the wound on the head caused the particular condition which he had referred to, it was not competent to ask him whether in his opinion this accident was sufficient to cause this weakened condition of the nerves and muscles of the abdominal walls and of the womb;</p> <p>That evidence that the plaintiff’s condition might have been caused by the injury or that the injury was sufficient to cause such a condition was not competent evidence to show that the injury did cause the condition.</p>