258 A.D. 844 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1939
Judgment and order affirmed, with costs. Memorandum: While we do not approve of the admission of opinion evidence on the question as to whether the number of policemen, assigned to and on duty at defendant’s stadium on the occasion when the plaintiff-wife received injuries, was adequate, we believe that no prejudicial error resulted therefrom. The issues were submitted to the jury in a fair and impartial charge, to which plaintiff neither objected nor excepted, and the verdict finds ample support in the evidence. All concur, Lewis, J., in the following memorandum: I do not share the view of a majority of the court that the opinion of defendant’s witness McCarthy, as to the adequacy of the number of police officers assigned to duty and present at defendant’s stadium at the time of plaintiff’s accident, was improperly received. The control of a great number of spectators gathered at an outdoor public athletic event, such as the plaintiff was attending, has become a science in which persons, by long experience or study, may gain skill and knowledge beyond that possessed by jurors of average intelligence, thus qualifying them as experts to give opinion evidence upon the subject. (Ferguson v.
