Opinion ID: 777337
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exclusion of Rebuttal Evidence

Text: 41 USWA argues the district court improperly excluded statements of one of its witnesses as hearsay. Generally, we review a district court's evidentiary decisions for abuse of discretion, and will reverse only when we find that such abuse of discretion has caused more than harmless error. Cooley v. Carmike Cinemas, Inc., 25 F.3d 1325 (6th Cir.1994). Recently we have applied this standard to hearsay evidentiary rulings as well. Trepel v. Roadway Exp. Inc., 194 F.3d 708, 716 (6th Cir.1999). In order for USWA to prevail on this claim it must not only demonstrate the district court erred in excluding the hearsay statement, it must demonstrate the error prejudiced its case. Id. 42 The statement USWA desired to admit was made by Andrew Powley. Powley was the trustee of the Local after the Plaintiffs were removed from office. As part of his duties as trustee he appointed members of the Local to serve with him in the operation of the trusteeship. In July 1995, shortly after the Plaintiffs had been removed from their offices, Powley appointed three members of the Local who had engaged in the same financial spending practices as Plaintiffs to work with him. USWA argued at trial it had removed Plaintiffs from their offices because of financial mismanagement of Local funds. Plaintiffs argued at trial this reason was not genuine and as evidence of this pointed to the fact Powley reappointed these three members even though they had been removed for making the same type of expenditures as Plaintiffs when the trusteeship was imposed. 43 USWA tried to respond to this theory at trial by putting on evidence Powley had legitimate reasons for reappointing these three members and was not indifferent to the Local's finances. Powley died before trial and was unable to testify. However, Powely had talked to James Kirkpatrick, the appointed president of the Local during the trusteeship, about his reasons for reappointing the three members. The statement Kirkpatrick made was: 44 Mr. Powley needed grievance people in place as quickly as possible. They are really the most essential interface with the company. He in fact made efforts to get older people who had been grievance committee men to do it. It's a thankless job.. and the only people he could convince were the younger people. 45 J.A. at 1782-83. USWA wanted this evidence admitted to show Powley reappointed these members because they were the only ones who would take the job and he was not simply indifferent to Local's finances. The district court excluded the statement as hearsay. 46 USWA argues even though Kirkpatrick's statement was hearsay, the statement should have been admissible under the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule 4 and its exclusion prejudiced them because they could not use it to rebut the impression Powley was not really concerned about the Local's finances. We find this statement to be equivocal on this point. Accordingly, we do not see that the exclusion of this statement prejudiced USWA even if it should have been admitted under the state of mind exception. We therefore conclude if there was any error it was harmless.