Opinion ID: 1646498
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Similar transactions.

Text: By motion in limine defendants moved the court to forbid plaintiffs under any circumstances from referring to other business dealings between defendants and other residents of Linn County and the results of said dealings. Trial court ruled it would not permit such evidence if it tended to prove a pattern of fraudulent inducement to secure signatures of witnesses on certain instruments, however, I will permit evidence of other transactions in which other witnesses had their names forged to documents by the Defendants as bearing upon the question of intent. I will permit evidence that June Ellingson, the notary public, did make or did take acknowledgements on other documents of other witnesses when they did not in fact appear before her   . I am basing my ruling on the theory that the issue before this Court at this time is a question of forgery. Failure of trial court to sustain the motion in its entirety, followed by evidence of similar conduct and claimed forgeries, is assigned as prejudicial error. Such evidence of similar transactions was, in the court's own language, allowed on the ground it had bearing on the issue of intent to commit forgery. Trial court apparently was relying on the following rule articulated in 32 C.J.S. Evidence § 580, at pp. 708-709: [E]vidence of similar acts may frequently be relevant, especially in actions based on fraud and deceit, because of the light which it throws on the state of mind of a person, as, for example, his knowledge, or because of the insight which such evidence of similar acts may provide into such person's motive or intent   . Civil trial admissibility of similar acts is basically a question of practicality involving the inconvenience of trying collateral issues. See 32 C.J.S. Evidence § 578, at p. 703. The determination of the relevancy and similarity of other acts is for the trial court within its exercise of sound judicial discretion. See Davis v. L & W Construction Company, 176 N.W.2d 223 (Iowa 1970). No one disputes the similarity of the other transactions testified to in this case. The other false acknowledgments were obviously relevant to the other alleged forgeries, which arguably bore on the issue of intent involved in the case at bar. We therefore hold the wide discretion of the trial court was not abused in partially overruling defendants' motion in limine.