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Lindberg v. California Dep't of Education10/31/2005
vent. Thus, the form of questioning had no material effect on the trial. (Estate of Hartley (1934) 137 Cal.App. 630, 634-635.)
C. Lindberg's Bankruptcy
Prior to trial, the court granted Lindberg's motion to exclude evidence that he filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998. The court ruled that because bankruptcy carries a societal taint, its prejudice outweighed its probative value. (Evid. Code, § 352.) The court reiterated its ruling during the course of trial.
Defendants contest this ruling. They contend that because stress was a central issue in the case, the jury was entitled to know about all causes of stress in Lindberg's life, including the bankruptcy.
When a trial court's evidentiary rulings are properly preserved for appellate review, we evaluate them for abuse of discretion. (Walker v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. (2002) 98 Cal.App.4th 1158, 1169.) No abuse occurred here.
As the trial court pointed out, bankruptcy carries a special stigma that could have created undue prejudice and diverted the jury from dispassionately considering the issues in the case. Moreover, the fact that Lindberg filed for bankruptcy had marginal applicability to the dominant issues of retaliation and constructive termination. We cannot say the court's ruling was arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable.
As a second alternative ground for our conclusion, we find any error in excluding the evidence was harmless. The trial court made clear at a sidebar that, while defendants could not mention the word bankruptcy, they would not be precluded from cross-examining Lindberg about any sources of stress he suffered at the time, including financial stress. We can safely say that the ruling, considered in its totality, had no appreciable effect on the outcome of this case. (Akers v. Miller (1998) 68 Cal.App.4th 1143, 1147; Evid. Code, § 354.)
D. Cervantes's Post-termination Letter to Eastin
Defendants next fault the trial court for overruling their hearsay objection to the letter from Cervantes to Eastin shortly after his termination in which he protested his firing as retaliatory and suggested that Eastin was condoning fraud by the CBO's (see fn. 2, ante, p. 8).
The trial court ruled that the letter was admissible as an official record (Evid. Code, § 1280) and allowed Cervantes to read it aloud to the jury.
Under Evidence Code section 1280, a writing of a public employee "made as a record of an act, condition, or event is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule when offered . . . to prove the act, condition, or event if all of the following applies: [ ] (a) The writing was made by and within the scope of duty of a public employee; [ ] (b) The writing was made at or near the time of the act, condition, or event. [ ] (c) The sources of information and method and time of preparation were such as to indicate its trustworthiness."
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