Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1Witthaus, R. A. (Rudolph August)
Science
Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1
Witthaus, R. A. (Rudolph August)
Medical jurisprudence; Poisons; Toxicology
In Missouri, the calling of a physician by the patient as a witness
to testify as to information acquired while attending, is a
waiver.[323] But offering one physician as a witness is not a waiver
of the privilege with reference to another.[324] An applicant for
insurance may, by an express waiver in his application, make an
efficient waiver, binding upon any one claiming under the contract of
insurance.[325]
In Nevada a waiver has been implied from the testimony of the patient
and her mother, where the patient was an infant seven years of
age.[326] And it was said that the parents of such an infant may make
the waiver.
In New York it has been held that reference to a family physician
when answering questions on an application for insurance, is not a
waiver;[327] nor is the presence of a third person, in aid of the
patient;[328] nor is the bringing of an action for damages for an
injury;[329] nor is the examination of the physician in a former trial
by the opposing party;[330] but where the ban of secrecy is once
removed in an action and the information once lawfully made public, at
the instance of the patient, it cannot be restored, and the disclosure
may then be compelled in any subsequent action;[331] it would seem,
too, that a physician who becomes a witness to his patient’s last
will and testament at the patient’s request is then subject to a
thorough examination on all points involving the patient’s testamentary
capacity.[332]
Where the patient testified herself and called an attending physician
to prove her physical condition, this was not a consent to the
examination of another attending physician, and it was said that the
opposite party by tactics on cross-examination could not compel the
patient to abandon a privilege which she refused to waive.[333] Fish,
J., in delivering the opinion of the Court in the last-mentioned case,
said of the operation of the statute, that it allows the patient to
use the testimony of the attending physician if he thinks his evidence
will benefit his case, and to object and exclude it in case he thinks
it will not benefit him; he may call to his aid the testimony of any
one whose views he approves and exclude that of another whose testimony
might tend to controvert that given with the consent of the patient;
that in this case the excluded witness was the best witness and could
tell nothing else than the patient had disclosed if she had told the
truth and it would relate solely to what she and the other physician
had described, but that the Court could not consider whether the
statute tended to promote the cause of justice, and he distinguished
_McKinney v. Grand Street Railroad Company_,[334] on the ground that
there the consent had been that the same physician should disclose what
he knew, while here the waiver of the excluded physician’s testimony
had been constantly withheld.
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