Swift v. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance

Headnote

Witness — opinion of must be based on known facts.

Appeal by defendant from a judgment entered upon a verdict for the plaintiff at the Genesee Circuit, and from an order denying a new trial.

The action was brought by the plaintiff to recover the amount due upon a policy of insurance on her husband’s life. The court rejected the opinion of one physician, based on facts testified to by another. It appeared that the former had treated the assured for a disorder in one of his groins, but did not discover that the disease was scrofula. The latter attended the assured in his last illness, and pronounced scrofula to be the cause of his death. The defendant sought to elicit from the first physician his opinion, based on the fact that the assured died of scrofula, and his own observation of the disease for which he treated him, respecting the character of the subsequent disease, and whether his disease was hereditary and scrofulous at the time he treated it. The court held that opinions of witnesses must be based on known facts, and not mere specula

tions, and that the rejection of. the evidence was proper. The other objections were held to be conclusively settled by the verdict.