Bruton v. Leavitt Stores Corp'n

I. The defendant offered evidence of a neurotic condition of the plaintiff causing her to exaggerate the effects of any injury while litigation on account of it remained unsettled.

The competency of such evidence is clear. But, so far as the evidence was only of her conduct in one instance of earlier litigation, it is also clear that its admission would have been improper even in discretion. Its probative value would have been slight, and the resulting “impractical and confusing multiplicity of collateral issues” (Stocker v. Railroad, 83 N. H. 401, 405) would have tended to render the trial…