Opinion ID: 182844
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Customer Complaints.

Text: The plaintiffs also challenge the district court's exclusion of a compendium of thirty-six customer complaints lodged with the defendant between 2004 and 2006. The plaintiffs aspired to offer this evidence to show that their alleged injury was reasonably foreseeable because others had advised the defendant of comparable incidents. The district court excluded this evidence because nothing in the record tended to show that the complaints were substantially similar to the plaintiffs' complaint. We review rulings admitting or excluding evidence for abuse of discretion. Colasanto v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am., 100 F.3d 203, 212-13 (1st Cir.1996). Federal evidentiary rules govern in diversity cases. Fitzgerald v. Expwy. Sewerage Constr., Inc., 177 F.3d 71, 74 (1st Cir.1999). If the federal rule is expansive enough to provide reliable guidance on a given issue, the court must apply it. Id.; Daigle v. Me. Med. Ctr., Inc., 14 F.3d 684, 689 (1st Cir.1994). The question presented here concerns the relevancy and unfairly prejudicial effect of the proffered evidence, and the Federal Rules of Evidence are sufficiently broad to encompass it. See Fed.R.Evid. 401-403. This claim of error fails at the outset. The plaintiffs never marked for introduction, or otherwise placed in the record, the list of complaints. An appellant has the burden of ensuring that the record is adequate to permit reasoned review of her claims. See Real v. Hogan, 828 F.2d 58, 60-61 (1st Cir.1987). The plaintiffs have defaulted on this obligation with respect to the instant claim. Even were we prepared to overlook this omission, the claim is hopeless. As best we can tell, the proffered evidence consists of a computer-generated printout. Each segment contains a cryptic description of the nature of a particular complaint, a description of the type of furniture involved, and a notation of the company's response. There are no details of any sort. The printout was produced by the defendant during pretrial discovery, and the plaintiffs conducted no investigation into the underlying facts of any of the thirty-six listed complaints. On the bare bones of the printout, none of the complaints appears to be similar, and the plaintiffs made no effort to establish any substantial similarity between the incidents underlying the enumerated complaints and the incident giving rise to this action. Indeed, on questioning by the district court the plaintiffs admitted that they could not even establish that any of the enumerated complaints involved actual bedbug infestations. Given this paucity of proof and the uncertainty as to what the printout means, it was well within the sweep of the district court's discretion to exclude it. See Heath v. Suzuki Motor Corp., 126 F.3d 1391, 1396 (11th Cir.1997) (noting need for special care in admitting evidence of purportedly similar incidents); McKinnon v. Skil Corp., 638 F.2d 270, 277 (1st Cir. 1981) (explaining that [e]vidence of prior accidents is admissible ... only if the proponent of the evidence shows that the accidents occurred under circumstances substantially similar to those at issue in the case at bar); see also United States v. Maldonado-García, 446 F.3d 227, 232 (1st Cir.2006) (noting that to be relevant, evidence must make the existence or nonexistence of a material fact more likely) (citing Fed.R.Evid. 401). The plaintiffs attempt to salvage this evidence by arguing that its admission with a limiting instruction would have been appropriate. This argument is jejune. The first (rather large) fly in the ointment is that the plaintiffs never make clear what limiting instruction they think would have been suitable and, in all events, they never requested a limiting instruction below with respect to the computer-generated printout. Their claim of error is, therefore, forfeited. See United States v. Leahy, 473 F.3d 401, 409-10 (1st Cir.2007). We need not probe the ramifications of this forfeiture because the argument puts the cart before the horse. Without a showing of substantial similarity, the evidence was not significantly probative, and evidence that is not significantly probative may be excluded entirely. United States v. DeSimone, 488 F.3d 561, 571 (1st Cir. 2007); United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1194 (1st Cir.1993). That is especially so where, as here, the evidence has a high potential for unfair prejudice. See, e.g., McKinnon, 638 F.2d at 277; see also Fed.R.Evid. 403.