Opinion
February 19, 1991
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Kassoff, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is reversed, on the law, with costs, and the matter is remitted to the Supreme Court, Queens County, for a new hearing on the issue of physical contact with an alleged hit-and-run vehicle.
It was reversible error to admit into evidence a copy of a police accident report, since the investigating officer did not witness the accident and could not identify with any specificity the sources of hearsay information contained in the report (see, Gagliano v Vaccaro, 97 A.D.2d 430; Avram v Haddad, 88 A.D.2d 942; Clarke v Nadel, 50 A.D.2d 851). For similar reasons, the officer's opinion as to the cause of the accident based upon inadmissible hearsay, should also have been stricken (see, Casey v Tierno, 127 A.D.2d 727). Since the court based its findings of credibility and its determination of the facts partly on the basis of this erroneously admitted evidence, a new hearing is required.
Moreover, the court erred in finding that the appellant had failed to report the hit-and-run accident to the police within 24 hours after the accident. The record shows that the police were on the scene within minutes of the accident and that a police accident report was completed the same day. It is immaterial that the report failed to make reference to physical contact (see, Matter of MVAIC [Lupo], 18 A.D.2d 717, affd 13 N.Y.2d 1017; Matter of Empire Mut. Ins. Co. [Zelin], 120 A.D.2d 365), or failed to specifically label the accident as a "hit-and-run" (see, Matter of Boxill v MVAIC, 33 A.D.2d 13; Matter of Hanavan [MVAIC], 33 A.D.2d 1100). Bracken, J.P., Kooper, Harwood and Balletta, JJ., concur.