Court Opinion

ID: 9457739
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:31:57.43982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:29.653494
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
PER CURIAM:
The Petition for Rehearing is denied and the Court having been polled at the request of one of the members of the Court and a majority of the Circuit Judges who are in regular active service not having voted in favor of it, (Rule 35 Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Local Fifth Circuit Rule 12) the Petition for Rehearing En Banc is also denied.
Before JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and WISDOM, GEWIN, BELL, THORNBERRY, COLEMAN, GOLDBERG, AINSWORTH, GODBOLD, DYER, SIMPSON, MORGAN, CLARK, IN-GRAHAM and RONEY, Circuit Judges.
DYER, Circuit Judge, with whom GEWIN, BELL, COLEMAN, SIMPSON and RONEY, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting :
I respectfully dissent from the denial of the Court to consider this case en banc. As I read the opinion the “expert” testimony in the EEOC report coupled with its characteristics as a business record produces a synergy that somehow makes the whole package admissible.
The opinion instructs the district court that it is obligated to hear evidence of whatever nature that is probative. Not only do I disagree with the breadth of this pronouncement but it would seem clear that this type of evidence is not categorically “probative.” As the opinion points out, the EEOC report “contains findings of fact made from different witnesses, subjective comment on the credibility of these witnesses and reaches [a] conclusion.”
The credibility of witnesses has historically been the sole function of the fact finder. An opinion concerning credibility by a so-called expert would be superfluous and inadmissible. 7 Wig-more, Evidence § 1918 (1940). McCormick, Evidence § 12 (1954); Note, Revised Business Entry Statutes: Theory and Practice, 48 Colum.L.Rev. 920, 930 (1948). The judge, as the fact finder in a Title VII suit, is hopefully more of an expert on the credibility of witnesses than is an EEOC investigator.
It is, of course, also within the district court’s sound discretion whether to accept an EEOC investigator as an expert witness. See Dyas v. Kansas City Southern Ry. Co., 5 Cir. 1970, 425 F.2d 1073, 1074; Southern Cement Co. v. Sproul, 5 Cir. 1967, 378 F.2d 48, 49-50; Langham, Langston & Burnett v. Blanchard, 5 Cir. 1957, 246 F.2d 529, 533-34; 2 Wigmore, Evidence § 561 (1940). While an investigator may be an expert in some areas, I cannot conceive how it can be clearly erroneous for a district court to reject his expertise concerning the credibility of witnesses.
In addition to its very questionable probative value, EEOC reports may be prejudicial, irrelevant, and unreliable. King v. Georgia Power Co., N.D.Ga.1968, 295 F.Supp. 943, 949;1 Moss v. Lane Co., W.D.Va.1970, 50 F.R.D. 122, 127; Hyatt v. United Aircraft Corp., D.Conn. 1970, 50 F.R.D. 242, 246 n. 4; Gillin v. *161Federal Paper Board Co., D.Conn.1970, 52 F.R.D. 383, 385; Hart v. Buckeye Industries, Inc., S.D.Ga.1968, 46 F.R.D. 61, 62-63.
Turning to the holding that the investigator’s report is an exception to the hearsay rule under the Federal Business Records Act, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1732, Judge Thornberry succinctly pointed out in Sabatino v. Curtiss National Bank of Miami Springs, 5 Cir. 1969, 415 F.2d 632, 637, cert, denied, 1970, 396 U.S. 1057, 90 S.Ct. 750, 24 L.Ed.2d 752 that,
“ . . . the main reason for the statutory language ‘in regular course of any business’ is to provide a check on trustworthiness, in that (1) the records must be kept pursuant to some routine procedure designed to assure their accuracy, (2) they must be created for motives that would tend to assure accuracy (preparation for litigation, for example, is not such a motive), and (3) they must not themselves be mere cumulations of hearsay or uninformed opinion.” (emphasis supplied).
It is undisputed that the EEOC report is merely a cumulation of hearsay and contains the opinion of the investigator based upon his credibility choices with respect to the hearsay. Furthermore, it is naive to say that it was not prepared for purposes of litigation when the report reaches the conclusion that there is a reasonable cause to believe that a violation of the Civil Rights Act has occurred. All of this underscores the report’s unreliability and lack of trustworthiness. See McCormick, Evidence § 294 (1954).
If we approve this type of hearsay and business record exception, we are establishing a poor precedent that can be equably applied to any other governmental investigative agency. The EEOC investigator is no more, and perhaps much less, of an expert with respect to his investigation than is the IRS or FBI agent. I oppose such a new broad rule of admissibility.

. The panel opinion, in a footnote, cites the King case for the statutory interpretation that 42 U.S.C.A. § 200e-5(a) prohibits only tlie use of anything done with respect to conciliation efforts. Beverly v. Lone Star Lend Const. Corp., 5 Cir. 1971, 437 F.2d 1136, 1142 n. 29 cites the King case but does not restrict the inadmissibility of evidence brought before the Commission to the conciliation conference.