Stephen G. Maloof, Administrator Of The Estate Of Lorraine Maloof, Deceasedv.Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
Lorraine Maloof, a wheelchair user, was injured when a MARTA para-transit van braked after veering into another lane and colliding with a vehicle. Her estate sued MARTA for negligent wheelchair security and negligent lane maintenance. The trial court granted MARTA summary judgment, in part after excluding an unsworn statement Lorraine gave to an insurance investigator and treating a police report as hearsay. The Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed the ruling on wheelchair security because the statement did not qualify under the asserted hearsay exceptions: it lacked the required foundation, was not a public record, and was not more probative or sufficiently trustworthy to invoke the residual exception. The court vacated the ruling on lane maintenance because the police report was admissible under the public-records exception to the extent it recorded the investigating officer’s own observations, and the trial court had acknowledged that the report created a factual dispute about how the collision occurred. The court did not decide whether third-party statements in the report were admissible. The judgment was affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings on the lane-maintenance claim.
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