# ARKANSAS LOUISIANA GAS COMPANY v. Evans

> Supreme Court of Oklahoma · November 24, 1964 · 397 P.2d 505

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9601351

## Case

- **Full name:** ARKANSAS LOUISIANA GAS COMPANY and United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, Petitioners, v. Ida E. EVANS and the State Industrial Court of the State of Oklahoma, Respondents
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Oklahoma
- **Decided:** November 24, 1964
- **Citations:** 397 P.2d 505; 1964 OK 249; 1964 Okla. LEXIS 471
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Berry
- **Judges:** Halley, Blackbird, Williams, Irwin', Davison, Berry, Johnson, Jackson
- **Cited by:** 4 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9601351

## Opinion text

BERRY, Justice
(concurring specially).
The term “spontaneous” as applied to “res gestae” expressions emphasizes the idea of an inner impulse acting without an external stimulus; it lays primary stress on the absence of external compulsion. A spontaneous expression is one made under the dominating influence of the very occurrence to which it relates. This is in contrast to communications which are elicited through a deliberate interchange of thoughts between two or more persons. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Nelson, Okl., 384 P.2d 914 . Measured by these definitions, the statements by the deceased workman made in answer to his daughter’s inquiry cannot, strictly speaking, qualify as spontaneous in nature. Although the daughter’s initial question to her father was doubtless provoked instinctively by his sudden appearance in a state of ill health, this, of course, cannot in any way alter the fact that decedent’s expressions were not voluntary or spontaneous but given in response to a direct query. The conversation between decedent and his daughter took place when decedent was resting at his home some three hours after the alleged episode of exertion.
While decedent’s statements lack, the requisite quality of spontaneity, there is, in my opinion, sufficient evidence here as to decedent’s condition to justify our inference that at the time the expressions in question were made decedent was actually in a state of shock so that his reflective faculties remained stilled. This does, to *513 my way of thinking, eliminate the possibility of design and renders the statements admissible. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Nelson, supra.
I,therefore, concur specially in the Court’s opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9601351. Public record. Not legal advice.