Fine v. Parella

I. A police officer who investigated the accident testified for the plaintiff. In cross-examination he was asked if he had any interest in the case and he replied that he had none. Thereafter the plaintiff’s offer of evidence to confirm the answer of the witness was rejected. The question in its form and substance neither charged nor asserted an interest, and no jury in the exercise of ordinary intelligence would infer an interest from the question. If the answer was disbelieved, yet it remained that there was no “testimony of counsel” from which interest could be found. The question instead…