# Fretz v. Anderson

> Utah Supreme Court · August 16, 1956 · 5 Utah 2d 290

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9624730

## Case

- **Full name:** Dale M. FRETZ, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ray ANDERSON, as Administrator of the Estate of MacK F. Anderson, Deceased, and Ringsby Truck Lines, Inc., and Adam Lehl, Defendants and Appellants
- **Court:** Utah Supreme Court
- **Decided:** August 16, 1956
- **Citations:** 5 Utah 2d 290; 300 P.2d 642; 1956 Utah LEXIS 108
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Henriod
- **Judges:** McDonough, Henriod, Crockett, Wade, Worthen
- **Cited by:** 28 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Overruled on other grounds by Fretz v. Anderson, 6 Utah 2d 169 (1957).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9624730

## Opinion text

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring in result) .
I concur in the result and suggest that the evidence about the alcohol content of the blood should not have been admitted in evidence. To take blood from a dead man for evidence, at the behest of a police officer, without the consent of relatives, without an autopsy or other official justification, is no different, except as to degree of repulsiveness, than decapitating a dead man to obtain evidence without such consent or sanction, and is a liberty taken such as enrages one’s sense of propriety and justice to the point that it should be inadmissible .in evidence. To hold otherwise encourages .indiscriminate and irresponsible mutilation of dead bodies and might actually lead to the death of a person, who, in fact was alive at the time of such mutilation, but who was thought to be dead by some irresponsible individual who may either order or execute the act of violating the person. It is no answer to say that this court' has placed the stamp of approval on admitting illegally obtained evidence — a practice whose sanction would not be shared by this writer, if not established by precedent. The evidence here is not so much illegally obtained as it is shocking to one’s sensibility, and it should be refused in evidence on the basis that it is so contrary to the American sense of justice as to be excludable.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9624730. Public record. Not legal advice.