by Andy Chen | Jun 8, 2021 | California, Evidence
In this post, I’m going to go over something that might strike some of you as being extremely pedantic. My intent is not to be pedantic simply because I can, but instead, I’m hoping to illustrate a more nuanced point that hopefully will be of help to you. Many people have heard the term “burden of proof”. The term is used widely, including in many statutes such as Section 500 of the California Evidence Code. Section 500 states: “Except as otherwise provided by law, a party has the burden of proof as to each fact the existence or nonexistence of which is essential to the claim for relief or defense that he is asserting.” In other words, you bear the burden to prove whatever it is you’re asserting, be that a claim, defense, etc. When I was in law school, however, I had a professor who absolutely hated that term because he considered it complete nonsense. Instead, he said, the “burden of proof” is actually two separate independent burdens. The first is the burden of the party to produce evidence that supports the claim for relief, defense, or whatever else they are asserting. This evidence, obviously, has to meet various criteria. At a minimum, it needs to be relevant to the issues at hand, properly authenticated, and non-privileged. Once it clears those hurdles, then it might still not be admissible because the court you’re in has, for example, exercised it’s discretion to exclude it because it is more unduly prejudicial than it is probative. As an aside, the authority that allows courts in California to do this is Section 352...
by Andy Chen | Feb 3, 2020 | California, Evidence
It should hopefully not surprise anyone that evidence is important in legal disputes. The parties will inevitably say their own versions of what happened, but unless someone has evidence to back up what they’re saying, the outcome will likely disappoint all involved. Not all evidence is treated equal, however. The evidence in question has to be relevant to the dispute in order to be of interest to a judge, a jury, the lawyers, etc. In this post, I’m going to talk about what “relevant” means in California court cases. The definition, unfortunately, varies from state-to-state. New York has a different definition as does the Federal Court system. Hopefully, though, you can see that the definitions are similar, regardless of the jurisdiction. In California state court, relevance is defined in California Evidence Code section 210, which provides: “Relevant evidence” means evidence, including evidence relevant to the credibility of a witness or hearsay declarant, having any tendency in reason to prove or disprove any disputed fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action.” I bolded the end of that definition to highlight that ‘the tendency within reason to prove or disprove any disputed fact’ is the essence of what relevance means. Relevance is important because it limits what evidence can be admitted. Under section 350 of the California Evidence Code, only relevant evidence is admissible. In the abstract, this should hopefully make sense to everyone. It would be confusing and a waste of time and energy to admit or use evidence that is unrelated (i.e. is not relevant) to what the dispute or case is about. In practice,...
