Opinion ID: 468767
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: evidence post-dating manufacture

Text: 135 The trial court below excluded a considerable amount of evidence that post-dated the manufacture of one or more of the specific products in question here. Under a negligence theory an actor is held accountable only on the basis of the knowledge he could, or should, have had at the time he acted; negligence is measured from the actor's perspective and the then foreseeable future. Boatland, 609 S.W.2d at 746; Borel v. Fibreboard Products Corp., 493 F.2d 1076, 1088 (5th Cir.1973). Under a strict liability theory, however, the dangerousness of a product may be proved as of any time prior to trial. 136 In this case appellant sought to introduce a large number of documents generated by Firestone and Goodyear in the period surrounding the manufacture of their disputed products. While these proffered exhibits may not have been admissible as business records, their very existence among the records would tend to prove knowledge. And most of them should be admissible as admissions because employees of one of the defendant prepared them while acting under instructions and within the scope of employment. (But most of them would be hearsay against the other defendant.) 137 The trial court took a simple, and to our mind oversimplified, approach to these documents: if they were dated after the date of manufacture of the product at issue, then they were automatically excluded. See 15 Rec. at 738-39; id. at 920-23. While this approach certainly promotes the cause of efficiency, we think that the overriding goal of justice demands a more sensitive analysis. 138 Plaintiff's Exhibit 27, referred to previously, provides a good example of this problem. An alternative ground for its exclusion (in addition to irrelevance) seems to have been the fact that it was dated April 13, 1966, while the Firestone rim base was manufactured in January, 1966. Plaintiff's Exhibit 27; Court's Charge to the Jury, at 9 (Stipulated Facts). Thus, after hearing plaintiff's arguments in favor of admitting Exhibit 27, the court remarked: 139 My recollection is that I ruled in limine in this case that any evidence that post-dated the distribution in commerce of these components would not be admissible without some showing of their relevance ... and it seems to me that the possibility or the likelihood of jury confusion is great when we start talking about things that were known after the manufacture or distribution of these components and for that reason, I am inclined to exclude any evidence that post-dates the distribution of any of these components in the stream of commerce. 140 14 Rec. at 707-08. This wholesale, blanket exclusion of evidence led to some obviously artificial and unreasonable results. For example, even a cursory examination of Plaintiff's Exhibit 27, the Tubeless Truck Tire Safety report by Firestone's chief truck tire engineer dated April 13, 1966, reveals that its frame of reference extends back far before January, 1966, when the Firestone component was manufactured. The opening sentence of the report states that it is being made [i]n accordance with your request for a summary of our experience in tubeless truck tire safety, and notes that the reasons it advances for considering the tubeless a much safer tire have been proven through many years of tubeless experience. All the generalizations and summaries made in the report obviously refer back to many years of experience with tubeless tires and single piece rims. Yet, because it was dated three months too late, the report was excluded. 15 141 Clearly, plaintiff's proffered documents tend to show a long and continuous experience with tubeless tires and single piece rims dating back to the early 1950's. The results of that experience must have been substantially available--in some form or another--to Firestone and Goodyear at the time they manufactured the components at issue here. To exclude other documents obviously referring to or reporting on that long history simply because they happen to be dated a few months after manufacture of a component litigated in this case is to give undue and artificial significance to an essentially arbitrary line of demarcation. This we cannot condone.