Opinion ID: 2589491
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Superior Court Properly Admitted the Recommendation Section of the Post-Accident Report.

Text: Alaska Rule of Evidence 407 provides, in pertinent part: When, after an event, measures are taken which, if taken previously, would have made the event less likely to occur, evidence of the subsequent measures is not admissible to prove negligence.... Evidence of subsequent remedial measures is relevant to the question of negligence, but it is excluded in order to encourag[e] defendants to take safety precautions after accidents. [5] The City claims that the rule should have barred the admission of the Accident/Incident Investigation Report completed by Louise Charles. The report includes sections headed What Should Be Done? and Corrective Action Taken. The superior court allowed the introduction of the report with the Corrective Action section redacted. In the What Should Be Done? section, which remained intact in the admitted version of the report, Charles wrote that [i]t would be helpful, to elders, if at least 3 more safety bars were installed on the walls in the sauna area and in the bathroom areas. Elders could then support themselves if necessary. Evidence showing that the City followed Charles's recommendation and installed the safety bars is plainly barred by the rule. The City initially argues that the recommendation for safety bars in the report is this type of evidence and claims that the report reveals the actual safety improvement later installed. But the redacted report only indicated that Charles suggested more safety bars. It did not reveal to the jury that the City followed her advice, and therefore was not excludable as evidence of the installation of the safety bars. [6] Rule 407 excludes the challenged section of the report only if the recommendations themselves are covered by the rule. Our previous cases applying this rule have concerned concrete fixes like placing barriers and flashing lights around a hole where an employee had been injured [7] or salting and sanding an allegedly icy walkway after someone had fallen; [8] we have never considered whether Rule 407 reaches a section of a post-accident report containing an investigation into an accident's causes or a recommendation for an improvement. Many courts applying analogous rules of evidence have held that the rule's scope is limited to improvements actually implemented. [9] These courts rely in part on the rule's phrase measures are taken, reasoning that [r]emedial measures are those actions taken to remedy any flaws or failures. [10] Under this reasoning, an investigation or recommendation is not a concrete action; a report on these activities by itself ... `would' not `have made the event less likely to occur.' [11] These courts therefore do not exclude reports of post-accident investigations and recommendations, often among the best and most accurate sources of evidence and information for injured parties. [12] Other courts disagree, holding that evidence of the parts of a report detailing investigatory findings and recommendations should be excluded as subsequent remedial measures. [13] These latter courts rely on the sensible proposition that in many cases, the investigation is the prerequisite to any remedial safety measure. [14] They reason that admitting such post-accident evidence would discourage defendants from carefully investigating accidents and considering how to prevent them in the future; they would then be less equipped to make the safety improvements the rule is designed to promote. [15] This broader interpretation of the rule's exclusionary scope may advance its goals, but it collides with another evidentiary policy, the principle of wide admission of relevant evidence, and with the language of the rule. Under Rule 402, our Rules of Evidence start from the proposition that all relevant evidence is admissible. [16] Rules of exclusion like the one we consider today are merely exceptions to this general rule. Post-accident investigations and recommendations are often relevant to the issue of negligence and, by revealing facts about the causes of an accident and the defendant's concerns about it, may be particularly useful to factfinders. [17] The general presumption in favor of admissibility strongly suggests, therefore, that such evidence should be admitted, despite any possible disincentive to safety improvements. Between these two competing policies, the language of the rule favors admissibility. Rule 407 prohibits evidence of measures that have been taken. We take measures to mean concrete actions, and to leave outside the rule's prohibition preliminary investigations and recommendations pointing toward those actions. [18] Even if post-accident investigations and reports were considered measures, the rule would not reach them. The rule excludes subsequent measures that would have reduced the likelihood of the accident if they had been taken previously, meaning before the accident. One cannot investigate an accident before it occurs, so an investigation and report ... cannot be a measure that is excluded. [19] The language of Rule 407 and the general presumption of admissibility laid down by Rule 402, along with persuasive authority from other courts, compel us to hold that evidence of post-accident investigations and recommendations are not automatically excluded as subsequent remedial measures. [20] Like all other evidence, investigations and recommendations are subject to the balancing test of Alaska Rule of Evidence 403, which provides that relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. The relation between admissible investigations and recommendations on the one hand and excluded measures on the other requires particular care in this balancing. If the jury is given evidence of the recommendations but not of the actual fix, there is a danger that jurors may draw the unfair inference that the recommendations were ignored. In deciding whether or not to admit recommendations, the trial court should carefully consider the likelihood of this inference and the prejudice it would cause. In this case, the superior court weighed relevance against prejudice and determined that Charles's report, redacted to exclude evidence of the remedial measures taken, was admissible. We find no error in its determination. [21]