Opinion ID: 170023
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Cumulative and Repetitive Evidence

Text: In an ordinary trial, evidence, even though relevant, may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed . . . by considerations of . . . needless presentation of cumulative evidence. Fed. R.Evid. 403. The trial judge's discretion is wide, because cumulative evidence is excluded in the interests of trial efficiency, time management, and jury comprehension. United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150, 230, 60 S.Ct. 811, 84 L.Ed. 1129 (1940). Under Hall, however, a judge must refuse admission to any extra-record evidence that is [c]umulative or repetitive. 300 F.3d at 1203. In this context, the concern is not only that cumulative evidence is a waste of time, but also, as discussed above, that all relevant evidence should be developed and presented to the plan administrator as early as possible. Parties may not easily be able to judge at the administrative stage whether evidence will be important or merely cumulative. Accordingly, under Hall, the exclusion of new, cumulative evidence is not merely discretionary, so as to avoid waste of time; it is mandatory, to spur the presentation of all potentially relevant evidence to the administrator. Evidence is cumulative if its probative effect is already achieved by other evidence in the record; that is, if the small increment of probability it adds may not warrant the time spent in introducing it. United States v. Davis, 40 F.3d 1069, 1076 (10th Cir.1994) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). It is distinguished from corroborating evidence, which buttresses weak or assailable evidence, often by establishing data which refute possible discrediting circumstances. 2 John Henry Wigmore, A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law § 874, at 235 (1923). New evidence need not be identical to previous evidence to be cumulative, but only of the same general substance, related to the same fact or point, and of little additional probative value. Although large portions of the letters of Dr. Peters and Dr. Caster were cumulative, we cannot conclude that the letters were cumulative in toto. Mr. Jewell's claim of an organic seizure disorder was not established by the evidence in the administrative record to the point of needing no further supportindeed, LINA advances that, without the disputed letters, the court should find that Mr. Jewell failed to prove the existence of an organic disorder at all. The additional grand mal seizure Dr. Caster mentions, as well as the seizure medication, is corroborative evidence. Likewise, we cannot say that the well-known and even axiomatic proposition Dr. Peters invokesthat no type of seizure is ever diagnosed on the basis of an electroencephalogramwas already established in the administrative record. True, the record contained Dr. Peters' 2002 clinical note commenting that it is not demanded that a diagnosis of seizure disorder be documented by an electroencephalogram but it is a helpful certifying finding. App. 293. But Dr. Peters' clinical notes also reveal that in 1999 he ordered an EEG to make a decision about whether this man has complex partial seizures, App. 325, and that in 2002 he did so once more, noting that the electroencephalogram is again of great importance in assisting with differentiation of a primarily functional from a primarily organic circumstance. App. 294. (These EEGs showed no significant abnormalities.) There is obvious tension between Dr. Peters' various statements, and the 2005 letter can be read as resolving this tension by repudiating some of the earlier statementsrejecting the great importance of the EEG and the notion that one could make a decision about complex partial seizure disorder on the basis of an EEG, after the EEGs turned out not to certify[] the doctor's suspicions. The letter reinforces the earlier claim that although an abnormal EEG might be helpful it is not demanded for a diagnosis. In this sense, whatever other questions this letter may raise, we cannot say that it was cumulative of other facts established in the administrative record.