Opinion ID: 895053
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Emphasis

Text: In harmless-error review, we have also looked to efforts by counsel to emphasize the erroneous evidence. [27] In this case, the court of appeals held that evidence of Reliance's wealth was harmless because it was mentioned only once. [28] If that were the only rule, there would be little use for the rules of evidence as everyone could ignore them once with impunity. Moreover, this argument conflicts with the plaintiffs' additional argument that evidence of Reliance's wealth was buried in the larger context of testimony that concerned the size of the Reliance Steel operation, the number of employees, the number of divisions, and so forth. While plaintiffs' counsel mentioned the gross revenues figures only once, he mentioned Reliance's large size from voir dire to closing argument: [opening statement] Also, Mr. Alvarado was introduced. He is one of the defendants in this case. He works for Reliance Steel. It's a corporation that he works with. They are a California corporation and a Texas corporation, but they have businesses also around Texas. They have some up in Garland, and they have others around the country. [closing argument] They don't even care what happens out on the highway with their 18-wheelers. Have you seen anybody here from Reliance Steel Corporation? Three thousand employees around the country. No. No. They don't care what happens. Just like gross sales, the size of Reliance and the number of its employees or divisions had no apparent relation to this traffic accident other than to suggest that it could pay a big judgment. Evidence of Reliance's wealth was not rendered harmless merely because it was emphasized in surrogate forms.