Section 16.30 Federal Agency Reports

• Library: Evidence 2017

c. (§16.30) Federal Agency Reports

Sometimes a long-standing statutory exception will provide a method of admitting into evidence what would otherwise be considered expert testimony. That is what happened in Rodriguez v. Suzuki Motor Corp., 996 S.W.2d 47 (Mo. banc 1999).

In Rodriguez, the plaintiff was injured in a vehicle accident when her car rolled over. The plaintiff’s case was premised on the theory that the accident was caused by a design defect that made the vehicle likely to roll over in the type of driving situation the plaintiff became involved in. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, an agency of the federal government, conducted studies of the vehicle’s rollover characteristics. It concluded that the methodology used by the plaintiff’s experts was faulty and that the vehicle’s “real-world” rollover characteristics were well within the range of other vehicles in its class. Rodriguez, 996 S.W.2d at 55 (emphasis added). In other words, the government reports directly contradicted the plaintiff’s experts on key points.

The trial court excluded the government reports as hearsay and mere conclusions and opinions that would not be admissible even under the official records exception to the hearsay rule. The Supreme Court pointed out that § 490.220, RSMo 2016, provides for the admission of United States government records (and records of other states as well) if properly attested. Rodriguez, 996 S.W.2d at 55.

“[T]he statute is unqualified and open-ended. Once the statutory foundational requirements are met, . . . then the reports are admissible in their entirety.” Id. at 56. The Court did not carve out an exception for opinions or conclusions that might be in the reports (although it left that question open for documents offered under the common-law exception for official records, id. at 57). The Court rejected policy arguments that the statutory exception should be restricted to “facts” by noting that these reports gain their credibility because they “were generated by a government entity that is presumably independent and unbiased and whose ultimate function is to protect the public by seeking out product defects, if...