Opinion ID: 508757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Evidence of Other Grenade Accidents and of Defective Fuses From Other Grenade Lots

Text: 10 We review district court decisions on the admission or rejection of evidence under an abuse of discretion standard. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Matherne, 348 F.2d 394 (5th Cir.1965). D & Z claims the district court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of other defective fuses and other grenade accidents. The McGonigals introduced evidence of two fuses with short delay times (2.47 and 1.27 seconds instead of the usual 5 seconds) which had passed through x-ray procedures. The fuse with the 2.47 time had been x-rayed by D & Z. The 1.27 second fuse was not x-rayed by D & Z but did pass through a similar x-ray procedure. The McGonigals also introduced evidence of two premature-detonation grenade accidents which had occurred at Fort Quantico and Fort Jackson. 2 Neither of those accidents involved grenades assembled or x-rayed by D & Z, but both had passed through 100% x-ray procedures. 11 D & Z argues that the district court erred in admitting this evidence, which it considers to be irrelevant and prejudicial. It claims that the party seeking to introduce evidence of prior accidents or prior failures as proof of the harmful tendencies of a product must show closely similar circumstances between the event involved in the case and the earlier instances. Jackson v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., supra, 788 F.2d 1070, 1082-83 (5th Cir.1986); Ramos v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 615 F.2d 334, 338-39 (5th Cir.1980). The McGonigals claim that evidence of other short fuses and grenade accidents was relevant and admissible to show the degree of danger involved in grenade manufacture and assembly. 12 Relevant evidence is defined as evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. Fed.R.Evid. 401. Even relevant evidence can be excluded if the court determines that its potential for prejudicial or inflammatory effects upon the jury outweighs the likely probative value of the evidence. Fed.R.Evid. 403; Jackson, supra, 788 F.2d at 1075. Trial courts are given broad discretion in determining potential prejudice, as in other evidentiary matters. Ramos, supra, 615 F.2d at 340. 13 In Jackson, we relaxed the requirement of similarity for introducing evidence of other accidents in negligence cases: For purposes of proving other accidents in order to show defendants' awareness of a dangerous condition, the rule requiring substantial similarity of those accidents to the accident at issue should be relaxed ... [A]ny differences in the circumstances surrounding these occurrences fall merely to the weight to be given the evidence. Jackson, supra, at 1083. Even under this relaxed requirement of similarity, however, evidence that grenades that explode prematurely are dangerous adds nothing to the obvious. Grenades are designed to kill and maim. Every juror knew this. The issue in this case was whether D & Z was negligent either because the x-ray procedure was not properly administered or because somehow a grenade was shipped without being x-rayed. 14 The evidence that another grenade, assembled and x-rayed by D & Z, had exploded prematurely was reasonably probative of the plaintiff's contention that D & Z was negligent in approving grenades with short fuses. But evidence that a grenade, assembled by another firm, had a short fuse does not appear reasonably probative of the charge that D & Z was negligent, and it is difficult to see any probative value in the evidence of the other two premature explosions. The plaintiffs contend that the evidence tended to show that the procedure was not 100% effective. But the plaintiffs were not challenging the procedure that the government prescribed. Instead they contended that D & Z was negligent in carrying out the prescribed procedure, in failing to perform the inspections with due care. That other contractors were negligent had no tendency to prove negligence on the part of D & Z. 15 Nonetheless, considering all of the evidence, we do not perceive any serious prejudice resulting from the admission of evidence of these three episodes. The jury was made fully aware that D & Z had not assembled three of the four other faulty grenades. We conclude that, while the district court should not have admitted evidence of the two early grenade detonations and of one of the two defective fuses, its admission was harmless error. Fed.R.Evid. 103(a).