Source: https://pasternaklaw.com/publications/motions-in-limine-dont-miss-categories-and-authorities/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 08:10:06+00:00

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“You can’t unring the bell.” Every trial lawyer knows this. Unfortunately, too often the logical follow up, that is, bringing a motion in limine to be sure the bell is never rung, does not happen. The following are some “don’t miss” categories for motions in limine, and a discussion of not only what motions you might want to bring and the authorities upon which to do so, but also how to prepare your case during litigation so as to best protect your motions in limine or even obviate the need for them in the first place.
Nearly every plaintiff is attacked personally at trial. This can be as simple as the standard “greedy plaintiff” innuendo, or it can be far more direct. This section of our article will give you some tools to protect your client (and your case).
Protecting your client’s privacy rights in discovery is not the focus of this article, but it bears mentioning here. The general rule is that the scope of discovery is broader than the scope of admissibility. Based on that rule, attorneys often say to themselves, “Well, this may look bad, but I’ll just exclude it at trial.” Taking this position is a big mistake, because the general rule is not really the rule. When it comes to a plaintiff’s privacy rights, the real rule is that the scope of discovery is narrower then the scope of admissibility. In other words, during discovery, there are ways you can protect your client from the other side discovering “bad” information. And obviously, if they don’t have it in the first place, you don’t have to worry about excluding it with a motion in limine!
Other very strong cases establishing the “Catch-22”: Brenda L. v. Superior Court (1998) 65 Cal.App.4th 794.; Knoettgen v. Superior Court (1990) 224 Cal.App.3d 11; Mendez v. Superior Court (1988) 206 Cal.App.3d 557.
All of these protections exist even in light of claims of alternate stressors. The most common “fishing” that defense counsel conduct is to try and find something else “bad” in the plaintiff’s life, call it an alternate stressor, and then bring it in to trial, not to really show an alternate stressor but to make the client look bad (divorce, abortion, an arrest, you name it). The irony is that this may well be admissible at trial, where you have few protections beyond Evidence Code section 352 (more prejudicial than probative). But if you can keep it out of discovery, you won’t even have to make that argument. The take-home message is this: if you are concerned about what might come in at trial, first see if you can protect it in discovery.
The above is not to say that all of that authority is useless at the time of trial. It isn’t. After all, if you had to object during discovery to questions which have solicited this information in the first place, the other side may already know about it, and therefore, doesn’t care whether or not you are admitted to particular items. They can just ask the questions at trial.
The argument to make is simply this: generally speaking, admissibility is broader than discovery, and if this stuff isn’t discoverable, then it sure isn’t admissible.
Perhaps the most common attack on the plaintiff is “character evidence,” such as prior suits, prior accidents, and the like.
This section is a starting point for protecting your client at the pre-trial motion stage to exclude a whole host of information damaging to your client.
This is not to say that you cannot bring an affirmative motion in limine (or oppose one of theirs) to be sure that you can bring in the other side’s character.
This is probably also the Evidence Code section with the lowest number of reported cases interpreting it for the simple reason that so much deference is given to the trial court in determining what does and does not fall within this exclusion.
The courts know, as a matter of logic, that anything that is “relevant” is also “prejudicial” in the sense that it harms one side and benefits the other. If a 352 motion is brought simply because one side does not like some piece of evidence, and without any real basis for argument as to “emotional bias” or the like, that motion only highlights to the court that the evidence is significant.
Therefore, this motion must always start first with an argument as to why the information is irrelevant (or, at best, of limited relevance), that is, of “low or no probative value.” Only then should the motion argue the prejudice, and then particularly as to why the prejudice is unfair or emotionally-based.
Frequently, the other side wants to hide what they know about your client behind privilege. For example, they often choose not to disclose what they learned in investigation. There is good authority for this. In Nacht & Lewis Architects v. Superior Ct. (1996) 47 Cal.App.4th 214, the court held that Form Interrogatories 12.2 and 12.3, which ask for identification of which witnesses were interviewed and which provided statements, is objectionable as invasive of the work product privilege.
Though the defendant’s position may be legally correct, they may also be wielding a double-edged sword.
If you think the other side has been hiding something behind privilege, whether it be witnesses or anything else, bring this motion.
There, because by definition you don’t know what the evidence is, you cannot make a more specific motion.
The other nice thing about this motion is that it may flush out the other side’s evidence, as they may fear that if they don’t disclose it, they won’t be able to use it.
In addition, Civil Procedure Code section 222.5 provides for “liberal and probing examination calculated to discover bias or prejudice with regard to the circumstances of the particular case. The fact that a topic has been included in the judge’s examination should not preclude additional nonrepetitve or nonduplicative questioning in the same area by counsel.” (C.C.P. § 222.5) Moreover, section 222.5 provides that: “A court should not arbitrarily or unreasonably refuse to submit reasonable written questionnaires, the contents of which are determined by the court in its sound discretion, when requested by counsel.” (Emphasis added.) Thus, in the absence of good cause, the use of a jury questionnaire is encouraged.
Utilizing a motion in limine for this purpose allows you to provide the court with the relevant law and reasons why the use of a questionnaire will make voir dire expeditious. You should also attach the proposed questionnaire (and have copies made in advance for the jury pool), thereby reducing any inconvenience the court may perceive in using the questionnaire.
When requesting the use of a questionnaire, it is important to stress to the court how and why the questionnaire will save time in selection of the jury. It is also helpful to provide the court with the estimated time it will take the prospective jurors to complete the questionnaire and the time it will take the court and counsel to review the competed questionnaires versus the time it would take to elicit the information contained in the questionnaires orally. Ideally, you should request that both counsel be able to review the questionnaires overnight. As a further incentive to use the questionnaire, you may suggest in your motion in limine that the questionnaires be completed by the prospective jury panel during argument on motions in limine or administered by the jury commissioner at a convenient time.
It is important to note to the court that questionnaire answers will enable counsel and the court to quickly identify those persons who may have to be disqualified for bias or hardship so that voir dire of those jurors can occur prior to general voir dire. This will minimize the time persons who should be excused for cause must wait to be excused, would avoid jurors learning from each other “acceptable” hardship responses, and generally minimize time-consuming hardship voir dire.
Finally, a juror questionnaire should be designed to ferret out prospective jurors with bias or prejudice. Jurors who might be inhibited to express bias or prejudice in open court might feel freer to disclose such bias or prejudice by privately responding to written questions. The questionnaire allows prospective jurors to be candid about their biases or prejudices without “polluting” the minds or feelings of other jurors.
This is especially important in the current political climate where there has been extensive media coverage on the topics of “frivolous lawsuits,””excessive jury awards,” legislation targeting “caps” on damage awards, and other “tort reform” proposals. A significant proportion of the venire has been exposed to such media publicity, creating the potential for widespread bias against civil litigation, particularly personal injury litigation. The written juror questionnaire enables counsel to assess jurors’ opinions and possible biases and prejudices on these and other topics without further “contaminating” other prospective jurors. Such a questionnaire also allows the court and counsel to determine which prospective jurors need to be individually voir dired out of the presence of the other jurors.
A current trend is for defendants to attempt to preclude plaintiff from black boarding the actual amount of any special damages, instead limiting damages to those that have not been paid by insurance. However, the collateral source rule is still applicable in such circumstances and should be asserted prior to trial. Thus, it is wise to prepare a motion in limine to exclude such evidence of collateral source payments in front of the jury as it would play to a jury’s biases and prejudices rather than to its sense of reason, and as such should be excluded pursuant to California Evidence Code section 352.
(c) identify all DOCUMENTS and other tangible things that support your denial or special or affirmative defense, and state the name, ADDRESS, and telephone number of the PERSON who has each DOCUMENT.
Similarly, Form Interrogatory 17.1, served in conjunction with Requests for Admission, requires that a party provide all facts, witnesses and documents on which a denied response was based. Oftentimes a defendant will respond with a general denial, failing to put forth any specific facts, witnesses or documents. If the defendant later attempts to use specific facts, witnesses and documents to establish affirmative defenses in the case, a motion in limine can preclude admission of such evidence.
(b) The court may impose an issue sanction ordering that designated facts shall be taken as established in the action in accordance with the claim of the party adversely affected by the misuse of the discovery process. The court may also impose an issue sanction by an order prohibiting any party engaging in the misuse of the discovery process from supporting or opposing designated claims or defenses.
(c) The court may impose an evidence sanction by an order prohibiting any party engaging in the misuse of the discovery process from introducing designated matters in evidence.
Where a defendant chooses to play fast and loose in the discovery process and refuses to provide any facts, any evidence, or identify any witness who would support the defendant’s denial and affirmative defenses, the defendant must be precluded from introducing any such evidence at trial as the plaintiff would be unable to search out information to rebut the affirmative defenses. While an issue or evidentiary sanction may seem drastic, it is commensurate in seriousness with the egregious misuse of the discovery process that is often seen.
Finally, we will address using motions in limine to block the testimony of the other side’s experts, either in their entirety, or at least in part. For a detailed discussion on “Expert Containment,” please see Chris Dolan’s article on this subject in the Sept 2004 edition of Forum, on which this section of our article is largely based.
(a) List that witness as an expert under Section 2034.260.
(b) Submit an expert witness declaration.
(c) Produce reports and writings of expert witnesses under Section 2034.270.
(d) Make that expert available for a deposition under Article 3 (commencing with Section 2034.410).
If the other side has failed to comply in any way, that fact provides the basis for your first expert motion in limine.
How you bring motions in limine should also inform how you take an expert’s deposition. Do not just spend all your time getting all of the expert’s opinions. Spend just as much time “closing the door,” with questions like, “So you have not as of this date formed an opinion as to ________.” Some common areas on which experts do not reach opinions are the reasonableness of medical expenses, the issue of causation, prognosis, future care, and the like. Look for these areas and others like them to ask questions designed to close off the expert’s testimony.
Your motion should, if applicable, also note the requirement of Evidence Code section 720 that the person be an expert, with the appropriate training, experience, etc., in the first place.
We have all heard experts, in response to the deposition question, “Do you have any other opinions that you have not expressed today,” hem and haw and state that it depends on what else they are asked, or asked to consider, or review, etc. Exclude this testimony with Jones v. Moore (2000) 80 Cal.App.4th 557, 565, which holds that opinions of experts that they assured they did not hold at the time of deposition may be excluded.
Cumulative experts can and should be excluded at the discretion of the court. (Cal. Evid. Code § 723; South Bay Chevrolet v. General Motors Acceptance Corp. (1999) 72 Cal.App.4th 861, 906.) Note that they are also properly excluded under Evidence Code section 352.
We trust that the above tips and information will give you the background for some critical motions in limine, and assist you in preparing your case so as to best serve those motions when the time comes to make them.
The Judicial Council has approved guidelines for jury questionnaires which comply with the dictates of Code of Civil Procedure section 205.
Shaana A. Rahman is with The Dolan Law Firm in San Francisco. She is a member of the Forum Editorial Board.

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