171 Ind. 674 | Ind. | 1909
This appeal is prosecuted under §1391 Burns 1908, Acts 1901, p. 565, §8, as one in which the proper construction of a statute or statutes is claimed to be involved.
Appellant' instituted this action in the Morgan Circuit Court, after a disallowance of his claim by the board of commissioners, upon a quantum meruit for $25 in holding an autopsy on the body of a child upon the order, and under the direction, of the coroner of Morgan county. Appellee answered: (1) By general denial; (2) that the child at the time of, and for days before, its death was under the care of physicians, and its death was not sudden or unexpected, and it was not supposed to have come to its death by violence or casualty; (3) that at the time of the death of the child appellant was one of the attending physicians and had the child under his immediate care; that its death was not supposed to have been caused by violence or casualty, but from diphtheria; that no crime was supposed to have been committed, and that the autopsy was not held for the purpose of investigating or discovering whether a crime had been committed, but for the purpose of settling a controversy between appellant and another attending physician as to the nature of the disease from which the child died, and was without authority of law; (4) that it was not supposed that the child had come to its death by violence or casualty, and there was no reasonable ground to suppose that it had. Appellant unsuccessfully demurred to the affirmative answers. There
The other statutes as to the certification of causes of death, etc., are for statistical purposes and health regulations, and being in the interest of the public health, are purely police regulations.
The judgment is affirmed.