## Facts

- William Lee Piper (driver) and Kyle Hoffman, Jr. (passenger) died in a motor vehicle accident.
- The Hoffman Estate brought a wrongful-death action against the Piper Estate.
- A related declaratory judgment action tried to a jury addressed whether a State Farm personal liability umbrella policy issued to Piper’s grandfather covered Piper as an insured.
- Coverage depended on whether Piper was a “resident” of his grandparents’ household when he died.
- State Farm offered testimony from Piper’s family members and documents bearing on where Piper lived.
- The circuit court excluded that evidence under West Virginia’s Dead Man’s Statute, W. Va. Code § 57-3-1, on the theory that interested parties were incompetent to testify about transactions or communications with the deceased.
- The jury found Piper resided with his grandparents, resulting in coverage under the umbrella policy.
- The circuit court denied State Farm’s post-trial motion challenging the exclusion of evidence.

## Issues

1. Whether W. Va. Code § 57-3-1 (the Dead Man’s Statute) is valid in light of the West Virginia Constitution’s allocation of rulemaking authority over evidence and procedure to the judiciary and the West Virginia Rules of Evidence.
2. Whether the circuit court erred by excluding family-member testimony and related documents concerning Piper’s residence based on the Dead Man’s Statute.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reversed and remanded for a new trial on the coverage issue.
- The court held the Dead Man’s Statute invalid to the extent it regulates evidentiary matters reserved to the judiciary and conflicts with the West Virginia Rules of Evidence.
- Because the statute was invalid, the circuit court’s exclusion of testimony and documents about Piper’s residence was erroneous.
- The error was prejudicial because the excluded evidence went to the central disputed coverage fact and materially affected the evidentiary record presented to the jury.

## Legal Principles

- The West Virginia Rules of Evidence are the controlling authority for admissibility and witness competency in circuit courts.
- Under W. Va. Const. art. VIII, § 3, the Supreme Court of Appeals has constitutional authority to promulgate rules governing court process, practice, and procedure, with the force of law.
- Legislative enactments that regulate evidentiary or procedural matters committed to the judiciary, and that conflict with court-promulgated rules, are unenforceable under separation-of-powers principles.
- A statute categorically declaring certain witnesses incompetent to testify about communications or transactions with a deceased person is an evidentiary rule and cannot override the Rules of Evidence.

## Conclusion

West Virginia’s high court invalidated the Dead Man’s Statute as an unconstitutional legislative intrusion into judicially controlled evidentiary matters and, because the trial court relied on that statute to exclude key residence evidence in an insurance coverage trial, ordered a new trial.


State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. Prinz, 231 W. Va. 96, 743 S.E.2d 907 (W. Va. 2013)