Carvell v. Winn

Summary

The Louisiana Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, reviewed a personal-injury judgment arising from a rear-end automobile collision in which the defendant's negligence was stipulated. The court upheld the admission of a Texas chiropractor as an expert within the scope of his expertise, affirmed the exclusion of a general illustrative motion-picture X-ray, and found no abuse of discretion in the jury's $7,000 damages award. The judgment was affirmed, with appeal costs divided equally between the plaintiff and defendants.

Holdings

1. A chiropractor may testify as an expert in a personal-injury action when a proper foundation establishes specialized training, knowledge, and experience within the scope of chiropractic practice, even if the chiropractor is not licensed to practice in Louisiana.
2. A trial court may limit an expert's testimony to the actual field of the witness's demonstrated expertise and may exclude opinions concerning specialized causal relationships not shown by the record to be within that expertise.
3. The admission of illustrative or demonstrative motion pictures is within the trial court's discretion, and exclusion is proper when the film is insufficiently relevant or contains matter too general to bear on the issues in the case.
4. The $7,000 award was neither manifestly excessive nor manifestly insufficient and therefore was not subject to appellate disturbance.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the trial court properly permitted a Texas chiropractor to testify as an expert in chiropractic and physiology.
2. Whether the trial court properly limited the chiropractor's testimony concerning causal relationships between the accident and the plaintiff's later physical ailments.
3. Whether the trial court properly excluded an illustrative cineradiographic motion picture as too general and irrelevant to the issues in the case.
4. Whether the jury's $7,000 personal-injury award was manifestly excessive or manifestly insufficient.

Disposition

affirmed