Opinion
April 15, 1991
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Garry, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed, with costs.
We find that the trial court properly precluded the plaintiff from bolstering her trial testimony by use of a prior consistent statement contained in a hospital record. An impeached witness cannot be rehabilitated by his or her antecedent consistent statements unless the cross-examiner has created the inference of, or directly characterized the testimony as, a recent fabrication (see, People v. McClean, 69 N.Y.2d 426, 428). The cross-examination here was an attempt to challenge the reliability of the plaintiff Ann Smith's account of how the incident in question occurred, but was not an attempt to show that her testimony was a recent fabrication (see, Fishman v Scheuer, 39 N.Y.2d 502, 504). Sullivan, J.P., Eiber, Rosenblatt and Ritter, JJ., concur.