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Rodriguez v. Suzuki Motor Corp.6/1/1999
ake v. Murphy, 445 S.W.2d 332 (Mo. 1969) (exclusion of landowner's offers to convey land for certain price in condemnation action); Felton v. Hulser, 957 S.W.2d 394 (Mo. App. 1997) (exclusion of admissions made in response to discovery requests by defendant); Sigrist v. Clarke, 935 S.W.2d 350 (Mo. App. 1996) (exclusion of portions of hospital records in malpractice action); State ex rel. Missouri Highway and Transp. Comm'n v. Beseda, 892 S.W.2d 740 (Mo. App. 1994) (exclusion of landowner's testimony and photographs relating to 20 ft. wide paved entrance in condemnation case); Siebern v. Missouri-Illinois Tractor & Equip. Co., 711 S.W.2d 935 (Mo. App. 1986) (exclusion of expert opinion on defective condition of coal loader in design defect case); and, of course, Suzuki I. Because reversal is required as to the NHTSA reports alone, this Court declines to address the application of the official records exception to the British TRRL reports, except to note that the issue is more problematic in the absence of a statute like section 490.220 and has not been fully briefed.
B.
The original NHTSA report and even the TRRL report, both issued in 1988, were independently admissible to refute the punitive damages claim, though the scope of that admissibility was limited to Suzuki's "state of mind" in designing and marketing the Samurai. During the punitive damages phase of the bifurcated trial, Suzuki offered the reports not to prove the truth of what was asserted in the reports, but instead to disprove plaintiff's allegation that Suzuki showed "complete indifference to or a conscious disregard for the safety of others."
Proof of Suzuki's state of mind under the complete indifference/conscious disregard standard was the prerequisite for an award of punitive damages, MAI 5th 10.06, and therefore the information available to Suzuki concerning the safety of the Samurai as set out in the government reports was highly relevant evidence. Suzuki's knowledge of the content of the reports, in other words, bore directly on the question of Suzuki's alleged "complete indifference to a conscious disregard for the safety of others."
Because the reports were offered only for this limited purpose, there was no hearsay violation. A hearsay statement is any out-of-court statement that is used to prove the truth of the matter asserted and which depends upon the veracity of the statement for its value. State v. Sutherland, 939 S.W.2d 373, 376 (Mo. banc 1997). Stated another way, evidence is hearsay only if its evidentiary value depends on drawing an inference from the truth of the statement. Id. at 377. Furthermore, if the relevance of the statement lies in the mere fact that it was made, no reliance is placed on the truth of the statement or the credibility of the out-of-court declarant, and the statement is not hearsay. Id.
Although plaintiff makes no claim that the reports, at least in this limited context, were hearsay, she nonetheless maintains that the trial court committed no error in excluding them. Her twofold rationale is 1) that the reports were in fact offered for their truthfulness (that the Samurai was not defective), as opposed to Suzuki's state of mind, and 2) that the only relevance of the reports was the ultimate fact that no recall was ordered. The first point seems to be that Suzuki's offer of the reports as state of mind evidence was pretextual. However, the mere fact that evidence may be inadmissible for one purpose does not preclude its admission for an alternative legitimate purpose, State v. Jones, 979 S.W.2d 171, 182 (Mo. banc 1998). The evidence pertaining to Suzuki's state of mind served an alternative legitimate purpose because it was highly relevant witho
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