Personal Injury Law

Missouri Persoanl Injury Law - Evidence at Trial: Unrelated Medical Procedures or Conditions, are they admissible?

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

As discussed in a previous post on Missouri Trial Evidence (Missouri Personal Injury Trial Evidence: Recreational Drinking and Drug Use) , personal injury lawyers need to make sure that they keep damaging evidence against their client, the injury victim, from being seen or heard by the jury so that the jury decides the injury lawsuit on relevant issues and not collateral issues that are not relevant to the injury claim.

As an experienced St Louis injury attorney, on such area I have seen that defense lawyers like to bring up in Missouri car accident cases and other injury related cases are unrelated medical conditions or procedures. Let's say the Plaintiff was hit by a drunk driver and broke their leg and injured their back, should the defense be allowed to introduce evidence that the Plaintiff also suffered a bout with cancer? The defense would want to do this to try and say the pain and suffering in the injured person's life is from the cancer and not the other injuries, an attempt to reduce legitimate injury money damages and the final personal injury verdict.

In Senter v. Ferguson, 486 SW 2d 644 (Mo Ct App ED 1972) the trial court allowed the defense to cross examine the Plaintiff regarding unrelated injuries from many years prior, the defense claimed this was to impeach the Plaintiff because she stated she was in "good health" prior to the accident. The appellate court reversed this Missouri personal injury case in part because of the use of Plaintiff prior medical conditions unrelated to her current condition.

The court stated "While we are dubious that this evidence, stretching as it did over a period of seventeen years and covering the ages of 43-60, served its purpose of impeachment, we could not sanction its admission even if it did serve the purpose. Irrelevant and immaterial evidence does not become admissible simply to impeach a witness "

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on December 09, 2010 (boomark / email).