## Facts

- Martin A. Salinas, an employee at a San Antonio refinery, was struck on the right shoulder by a bolt dropped by workers above him while he was drilling holes in concrete.
- Salinas claimed continuing, disabling shoulder and back pain from the accident through the time of trial.
- The insurer presented medical testimony that the injury was not serious, that Salinas had little or brief pain, and that he was exaggerating or malingering.
- Salinas sought to introduce three lay witnesses to testify that, on multiple occasions months after the accident, Salinas complained of present, existing shoulder and back pain.
- The trial court excluded the lay testimony.
- The jury found only limited incapacity (total incapacity for six weeks and partial incapacity for 52 weeks), and judgment was entered accordingly.

## Issues

1. Whether the Texas Supreme Court had jurisdiction to review an intermediate appellate judgment reversing and remanding based on an evidentiary ruling.
2. Whether lay testimony recounting an আহত party’s oral complaints of present, existing pain is admissible to prove the existence and continuity of that condition, and whether exclusion of such evidence was reversible error.

## Decision

- The Texas Supreme Court held it had jurisdiction to review the case because the intermediate court’s disposition turned on a legal question concerning admissibility of evidence.
- The Court held the excluded lay testimony about Salinas’s contemporaneous complaints of present pain was admissible.
- The Court agreed the exclusion was prejudicial in light of the dispute over the duration and genuineness of Salinas’s pain.
- The Court left in place the judgment reversing and remanding for a new trial.

## Legal Principles

- A person’s statements describing present, existing bodily pain or symptoms are admissible to prove that condition when confined to present condition (not past condition or fault), even if made to laypersons.
- Such statements need not be made to a physician to be admissible; the recipient and circumstances may affect weight, not admissibility.
- Admissible expressions of present pain include articulated verbal complaints, not only involuntary exclamations.
- Excluding corroborative evidence of ongoing pain can be reversible error when credibility and duration of pain are central and the opposing party offers evidence suggesting malingering.

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court held it could review the intermediate court’s evidentiary ruling and affirmed that lay witnesses may testify to an injured party’s contemporaneous complaints of present pain; excluding such evidence in a contested workers’ compensation disability case required reversal and a new trial.


Casualty Ins. Co. of Cal. v. Salinas, 333 S.W.2d 109 (Tex. 1960)