It is familiar law that, ordinarily, physicians’ office records or hospital records are admissible pursuant to the “business records” exception to the hearsay rule codified at CPLR 4518(a) to the extent they are germane to diagnosis and treatment. This includes medical opinions.1 Where, however, details of how a particular injury allegedly occurred are not relevant to diagnosis and treatment, they are not considered to have been recorded in the regular course of a hospital’s or physician’s business and are therefore inadmissible and subject to redaction. As explained by the Court of Appeals in the leading case of Williams v. Alexander.2
[i]n some instances, perhaps, the patient’s explanation as to how he was hurt may be helpful to an understanding of the medical aspects of his case; it might, for instance, assist the doctors if they were to know that the injured man had been struck by an automobile. However, whether the patient was hit by car A or car B, by car A under its own power or propelled forward by car B, or whether the injuries were caused by the negligence of the defendant or another, cannot possibly bear on diagnosis or aid in determining treatment. That being so, entries of this sort, purporting to give particulars of the accident, which serve no medical purpose, may not be regarded as having been made in the regular course of the hospital’s business (emphasis in original) (citations omitted).
Thus, in Williams the portion of a hospital record containing the plaintiff’s statement to a physician that he was hit after a car that had been stopped at an intersection was propelled into him by another vehicle was inadmissible.
