EVIDENCE - ADMISSIBILITY OF AGE IN HOSPITAL RECORD AS BUSINESS ENTRY

Authors

Craig E. Davids, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

Representing his birth date as 1866, deceased purchased from defendant insurance company in 1921 a policy on his life, which provided that in the event of any misrepresentation of age the insured's beneficiary would receive only that amount which a standard policy issued at his true age would stipulate for the premiums paid. In a suit by the beneficiary to recover on the policy, defendant attempted to prove that deceased was born at least as early as 1862. Among other evidence, defendant introduced a hospital record of deceased's visit to a particular institution in 1936 where he represented his age to be 75 or as having been born in 1861. This proffered evidence was excluded by the trial court on the theory that admissions by the insured were not admissible against the beneficiary of the insured. Held, reversed, one justice dissenting. The age of the patient in a hospital record is a medical fact and admissible as a "memorandum of an act, transaction, occurrence, or event'' as provided by statute. Pollack v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., (C.C.A. 3d, 1943) 138 F. (2d) 123.

Recommended Citation

Craig E. Davids, EVIDENCE - ADMISSIBILITY OF AGE IN HOSPITAL RECORD AS BUSINESS ENTRY, 43 Mich. L. Rev. 411 (1944).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol43/iss2/8