In my inaugural column,1 I discussed the Court of Appeals decision in Williams v. Alexander, 309 N.Y. 283 (1955), which addressed the issue of the admissibility under New York’s business records exception to the hearsay rule, CPLR 4518(a), of an entry in a patient’s medical record relating to the cause or circumstances of the accident or incident in which the patient sustained injury or became ill as made by a physician or other health care professional upon information provided by the patient. The column noted that under Williams, such an entry will be admissible only to the extent (1) the entry is germane to the patient’s diagnosis or treatment; and (2) the patient’s statement to the physician conveying that account of injury or illness comes within one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule other than the business records exception.
It then endeavored to show that three recent Appellate Division decisions had misapplied Williams by implicitly recognizing that its two elements were disjunctive, not conjunctive, through their holding that an entry is admissible when such entry is inconsistent with the patient’s position at trial as a party admission even though the entry is not germane to diagnosis or treatment.
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