Opinion ID: 168353
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admissibility of Seat Belt Evidence

Text: 73 Great American's principal evidentiary argument on appeal is that it should have been permitted to offer evidence showing Sims did not fasten his seat belt on the night he died. 74 The district court relied on Oklahoma's Mandatory Seat Belt Act to exclude this evidence. See Okla. Stat. tit. 47, § 12-420 (barring evidence of the use or non-use of a seatbelt in any civil suit). The court reasoned that in a diversity action, although the admissibility of evidence is generally governed by the Federal Rules of Evidence, when the evidentiary question is so dependent on state substantive policy, state law must be applied. R. at 467 (quoting Romine v. Parman, 831 F.2d 944 (10th Cir.1987)). Great American contends this logic is flawed for two independent reasons: (1) because the Federal Rules of Evidence govern, this evidence is admissible, and (2) even if the Rules are not applicable, the statute does not apply where a defendant is not attempting to insinuate fault but, as here, is only attempting to prove a driver's state of mind. 75 Although we hold that the Rules exclusively govern in federal diversity cases, we still must determine, in accordance with our Rule 401 relevancy assessment, whether § 12-420 is a procedural rule or a substantive one. Because this determination necessarily involves interpretation of Oklahoma law, we apply the most recent pronouncement of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. If, however, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has not yet spoken on the issue, we predict how that court would address the issue. Blackhawk-Central City Sanitation Dist. v. Am. Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., 214 F.3d 1183, 1188 (10th Cir.2000). We review de novo the district court's interpretation of Oklahoma law. Burton v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 397 F.3d 906, 910 (10th Cir.2005). 76
77 Oklahoma enacted its Mandatory Seat Belt Act to encourage seat belt use on the roads of Oklahoma. See Bishop v. Takata Corp., 12 P.3d 459, 464 (Okla.2000) (noting that the obvious purpose[] of the Act [is] to codify public policy of encouraging seat belt use); see generally §§ 12-416 to 420. To this effect, the Act requires drivers and front-seat passengers to fasten their seat belts. However, the Act is careful to limit the civil court ramifications for failure to wear a seat belt, directing that evidence of the use or non-use of seat belts is inadmissible in any civil suit in Oklahoma. Okla. Stat. tit. 47, § 12-420. 78 Even though the Oklahoma Supreme Court has not squarely addressed whether § 12-420 is a substantive rule, a careful review of decisions from that court persuades us that it is. 10 In Bishop v. Takata Corp., the court described the purpose and scope of the Act in holding it inapplicable to products liability cases: 79 Considering the Act as a whole, and the context from which it was enacted, the obvious purposes of the Act are to codify public policy of encouraging seat belt use and to make seat belt use mandatory for drivers and front-seat passengers by providing a penalty for nonuse. Section 12-420 expressly clarifies that the sole legal sanction for the failure to wear a seat belt is the fine imposed by the Act and that a person will not be penalized in a civil proceeding, by connotations of fault, for choosing to refrain from wearing a seat belt. To read the statute any more broadly would defeat the legislative intent. The entire Act is confined to the regulation of the conduct of the driver or the passenger of a passenger vehicle as seat belt users or nonusers. 80 12 P.3d at 464 (emphasis added). A few years later, the court in Clark v. Mazda Motor Corp., 68 P.3d 207, 208 (Okla.2003), further clarified the scope of the Act, stating that the public policy encouraging seat belt use protects persons in civil proceedings from connotations of fault. 81 While not completely clear, the language in Bishop and Clark suggests that § 12-420 reflects substantive state policy to the extent that drivers and passengers, while required by law to wear their seat belts, should not be penalized, through connotations of fault, beyond a small statutory fine. 11 The rule is not concerned with how seat-belt evidence might affect the accurate resolution of litigated disputes. Nor is it concerned with the efficient resolution of disputes. To the contrary, the rule was designed to protect drivers from being blamed in a court of law for failure to wear a seat belt. Cf. Barron, 965 F.2d at 199 (A state law that bars admission of seat belt evidence is a rule of evidence if it is motivated by concern that jurors attach too much weight to a plaintiff's failure to wear his seatbelt [but] is a substantive rule if it is designed not to penalize persons who fail to fasten their seatbelts.). 82 A negligence action arising from a car accident illustrates how § 12-420 acts to avoid penalizing litigants with connotations of fault. In this scenario, a driver not wearing his seat belt is injured in a car accident caused by another vehicle. The injured driver sues. At trial, the defendant wants to argue that had the plaintiff been wearing a seat belt, plaintiff's injuries would have been minimized and, accordingly, plaintiff's recovery should be reduced. Section 12-420 clearly precludes this argument. 83 We are not presented with such a case here. Instead, Great American, the defendant, wishes to present evidence of non-use of a seat belt as proof of Sims's, the driver's, suicidal intent. Section 12-420 was not created to apply to such facts. The Oklahoma Supreme Court currently limits the application of § 12-420 to negligence cases. See Bishop, 12 P.3d at 466 (noting that the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the Act clearly precludes the introduction of evidence of the use or nonuse of seat belts to support a claim of negligence in a wrongful death action ....) (citing Comer v. Preferred Risk Mut. Ins. Co., 991 P.2d 1006, 1008 (Okla. 1999)); Clark, 68 P.3d at 208 (Okla.2003) (Section 12-420 ... prohibits introduction of [evidence of the use or non-use of seat belts] to impute negligence or fault to a person who elects not to wear a seat belt.). 84 That is not to say that the court might not later expand its application, but the court has indicated a preference to limit the Act to disputes where the conduct of the driver is at issue. See Bishop, 12 P.3d at 464 (noting that the Act is confined to the regulation of the conduct of the driver.). For that reason, a number of Oklahoma decisions find the Act inapplicable in cases involving products liability. Clark, 68 P.3d at 210 (Opala, J. concurring); Bishop, 12 P.3d at 466. 85 Great American does not argue that Sims was negligent for failing to wear his seat belt or otherwise insinuate fault for this omission. It argues he was suicidal. Whether a mandatory seat belt law exists in Oklahoma is irrelevant to this argument. In a negligence case, the existence of a seat belt law could be critical to a damages assessment because it imparts a duty on the injured party to wear a seat belt. See, e.g., Gardner ex rel. Gardner v. Chrysler Corp., 89 F.3d 729, 733 (10th Cir.1996) (noting that the Kansas legislature modified earlier law in order to clarify the extent of the duty owed under a mandatory seat belt law). But here duty is not an element of the claim. Great American frankly is unconcerned whether Sims could have avoided his injuries had he been wearing his seat belt. Great American is only concerned with how his failure to wear a seat belt reflects on his mental state. In this sense, the evidence does not speak to the conduct of the driver but instead to the driver's state of mind. 86 Because Great American introduced this evidence for purposes of showing Sims's state of mind, not to insinuate fault, we hold that Oklahoma's Mandatory Seat Belt Act is inapplicable to the present case, and the district court should have admitted this evidence at trial. Cf. Barron, 965 F.2d at 198-200 (holding that North Carolina's seat belt exclusionary rule, while a substantive law, is inapplicable to the present case because the use of evidence was not to show that [Plaintiff] failed to mitigate the consequences of the accident but to show that [Defendant] had been reasonable). 87 Having concluded the seat belt evidence was admissible, we turn to what effect the court's preclusion of this evidence had at trial. 88
89 Although we find error here, reversal is not appropriate unless the error prejudicially affected a substantial right of a party or if we reasonably conclude that the exclusion of this evidence led the jury to reach a contrary result. Praseuth v. Rubbermaid, Inc., 406 F.3d 1245, 1253 (10th Cir.2005); see Fed. R.Civ.P. 61. We look to the particular jury in the particular circumstances of the trial. United States v. Hedgepeth, 418 F.3d 411, 421 (4th Cir.2005) (quotation omitted); see also United States v. Crawford, 130 F.3d 1321, 1324 (8th Cir.1997). Put another way, after reviewing the entire record, we must reverse unless we find that this jury's verdict more probably than not was unaffected by the error. Obrey v. Johnson, 400 F.3d 691, 699-701 (9th Cir.2005); see Mehojah v. Drummond, 56 F.3d 1213, 1215 (10th Cir.1995) (requiring review of entire record). We note that an important factor in determining whether an error was harmless is the strength of the case in support of the verdict.... The risk is greater that a particular error tipped the scales in a close case than in one in which the evidence was extremely one-sided. 12 11 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2883 (2d ed. 1995 & Supp.2005). 90 Here, Great American planned to offer testimony that Sims habitually wore his seat belt but failed to do so on the night he died. 13 We agree this evidence is probative of Sims's state of mind. While the jury surely could have found Sims failed to buckle up, not because he was suicidal but because he was intoxicated, the very nature of habit evidence is that it is done reflexively. Habit is the person's regular practice of meeting a particular kind of situation with a specific type of conduct. Fed.R.Evid. 406 advisory committee's notes (quotation omitted); accord United States v. Serrata, 425 F.3d 886, 906 (10th Cir.2005). Accordingly, the jury might have weighed this habit evidence along with the lack of skid marks at the scene, the car's high rate of speed, and Sims's alleged mention of driving off a cliff, and found Sims intended to commit suicide. 91 We nonetheless find the exclusion harmless. At trial, Great American had the burden of proving Sims committed suicide and it, along with Mrs. Sims, presented extensive evidence on this issue. Indeed, this issue was the crux of the case. Great American offered testimony that Sims was traveling at an excessive rate of speed, testimony that he did not attempt to avoid the accident, testimony from Mrs. Sims's daughter that Sims left the house crying, and Mrs. Sims's sworn statement to police that Sims intended to drive off a cliff. Yet, the jury unequivocally rejected Great American's characterization of the evidence when it not only found for Mrs. Sims on the breach of contract claim but also on the bad faith and punitive damages claims. It is fair to say that if the question had been close, the jury would not have awarded both bad faith and punitive damages. 92 Therefore, we cannot reasonably conclude that the seat belt evidence, by itself, would have led the jury to find in favor of Great American on the breach of contract claim. 14 93