Consider the following scenario: P is injured while attending a social function held on D’s premises. Seeking medical treatment, P presents initially at a hospital’s emergency room and then at his primary care physician’s office. During the course of treatment, P provides to an emergency room physician and primary care physician a statement as to how he was injured, which account is duly recorded by each physician in both P’s hospital and physician office records. These entries are now inconsistent with the position P has taken as to how P was injured in the trial of the action P has commenced against D.
If the physicians who recorded P’s statement to them were called by D to testify, the physicians could certainly testify to such statement, which constitutes an admission by a party-opponent.1 Are the entries in the medical records recording the statement likewise admissible if offered by D? The Court of Appeals held in Williams v. Alexander, 309 N.Y. 283 (1955), that such entries are admissible under New York’s business records exception to the hearsay rule, as set forth in CPLR 4518(a), only if they are germane to the patient’s medical treatment or diagnosis.
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