## Facts

- A wife sued her husband for maintenance and alleged she was pregnant by him.
- The husband denied paternity, alleged the wife committed adultery, and counterclaimed for divorce.
- The child was born while the litigation was pending.
- The husband moved for an order requiring blood-grouping tests comparing the blood of the husband, wife, and child.
- The trial court ordered the wife and child to submit to the blood-grouping tests.
- The wife took an interlocutory “special appeal” challenging only the trial court’s authority to compel the tests.

## Issues

1. Whether a trial court in a maintenance/divorce action involving disputed paternity has authority, absent an express statute, to order the wife and child to submit to blood-grouping tests for comparison with the husband’s blood.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the order compelling the wife and child to submit to blood-grouping tests.
- The court held the trial court was authorized to order the tests as a fact-finding measure relevant to disputed paternity.
- The court accepted that blood-grouping tests cannot prove paternity but can, when properly administered, conclusively exclude paternity in many cases.
- The court treated the absence of an express authorizing statute as not barring such an order where the evidence sought is materially relevant.

## Legal Principles

- A court may compel blood-grouping tests in a domestic relations case when paternity is genuinely in dispute and the tests are materially relevant to adjudicating the parties’ claims.
- Blood-grouping evidence is competent to prove non-paternity by exclusion, even though it cannot establish paternity affirmatively.
- Scientific evidence endorsed as reliable for exclusion purposes may be compelled and admitted when performed by qualified experts and directed to issues framed by the pleadings.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a trial court’s power to order blood-grouping tests in a maintenance/divorce proceeding to assist in resolving a contested paternity question, recognizing the evidentiary value of such tests as potentially conclusive proof of non-paternity.


Beach v. Beach, 114 F.2d 479 (D.C. Cir. 1940)