205 Mass. 49 | Mass. | 1910
The defendant contends that the apparatus offered was inadmissible first, because of the “ insufficiency of
As a rule the question whether evidence of experiments shall be admitted depends largely upon the discretion of the trial judge; and his action in the exercise of this discretion will not be reversed unless plainly wrong. Field v. Gowdy, 199 Mass. 568, and cases cited. In this case the result of the experiments did not depend upon the fluctuations of human agencies, nor on conditions whose relations to the result were uncertain, but upon the immutable working of natural laws ; and upon the evidence the presiding judge may well have found that such experiments were likely to be more reliable as to the speed of the automobile than the conjectural statement of an eye witness or the interested statement of a chauffeur. We cannot say as matter of law that the evidence would not justify the judge in coming to the conclusion that the experiments would be useful in determining the speed of the car. Indeed it would seem desirable to have some machine whose action being dependent upon the uniform working of the laws of nature would record the speed of a moving object.
Hor is the fact that the experimenter was not an expert fatal to the introduction of the machine. A man may testify to the existence of thunder and lightning and the disastrous results therefrom without being an expert on electricity or electrical phenomenon. For a discussion of the law relating to the admissibility of experiments see among other cases Baker v. Harrington, 196 Mass. 339, and cases cited.
It follows that there was no error in admitting the instrument in question, or the evidence as to its construction, or that relating to the experiments.
Exceptions overruled.