## Facts

- Mary McAndrews sued Roy H. Leonard for personal injuries from an accident that allegedly caused serious head trauma.
- Treatment required surgical removal of a portion of McAndrews’s skull, leaving a cranial defect that later “filled in” naturally.
- At trial, experts disputed the character of the filling:
  - McAndrews’s expert described it as soft tissue, leaving the brain comparatively unprotected.
  - Leonard’s expert described it as hard, callus-like material, suggesting more protection and less lasting injury.
- To help resolve this dispute, McAndrews requested that jurors be allowed to touch the affected area of her head to compare hardness with surrounding skull.
- Leonard objected that the question was medical in nature and beyond lay competence absent expert opinion.
- The trial court allowed the tactile examination; the jury returned a verdict for McAndrews.
- Leonard appealed, challenging the permissibility of the jury’s physical examination and related evidentiary rulings.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court committed reversible error by allowing jurors to physically examine (touch) the plaintiff’s head to assess the hardness of the filled skull defect.
2. Whether permitting jurors to rely on ordinary sensory perception to evaluate an injury improperly invades matters requiring expert testimony.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Vermont affirmed the judgment for McAndrews.
- Allowing jurors to touch and examine the plaintiff’s head was not reversible error.
- The procedure was treated as relevant physical (real/demonstrative) evidence and within the trial court’s sound discretion.

## Legal Principles

- A trial court may permit jury inspection, including physical examination of a party’s body, when it is relevant and likely to assist the jury’s fact-finding.
- Control over the mode of presenting evidence, including whether to allow a jury examination, is committed to the trial judge’s discretion and is reviewed on appeal for abuse of discretion.
- Jurors may use ordinary senses (including touch) to compare observable physical conditions; such comparison need not be barred merely because expert testimony also addresses the subject, so long as the jury is not asked to perform a medical diagnosis.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a plaintiff’s verdict in a personal-injury case, ruling that the trial judge acted within permissible evidentiary discretion by allowing jurors to palpate the plaintiff’s skull area to help evaluate the extent and permanency of the claimed injury amid conflicting expert testimony.


McAndrews v. Leonard, 134 A. 710 (Vt. 1926)