Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad v. Hawthorne

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding evidence that defendant made changes to machine after employee’s injury was inadmissible
• allowing subsequent changes as evidence of prior negligence \'virtually holds out an inducement for continued negligence'\
• the Supreme Court reasoned that evidence of subsequent remedial measures could not be used to prove negligence because such evidence is irrelevant, confusing to the jury, and prejudicial to the defendant
• the Supreme Court reasoned that evidence of subsequent remedial measures could not be used to prove negligence because such evidence is irrelevant, confusing to the jury, and prejudicial to the defendant
• Supreme Court explained that this kind of evidence should not be admitted for “it is calculated to distract the minds of the jury from the real issue, and to create a prejudice against the defendant”
• “[T]he taking of such precautions against the future is not to be construed as an admission of responsibility for the past, [and] has no legitimate tendency to prove that the defendant had been negligent before the [incident] happened.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).