Cheryle Ann Scheerer John Scheerer v. Hardee's Food Systems, Inc.
45 Fed. R. Serv. 410, 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 20101, 92 F.3d 702 (1996)
Premium Feature
Subscribe to Lexplug to listen to the Case Podcast.
Rule of Law:
An incident report is not admissible under the business records exception to the hearsay rule (Fed. R. Evid. 803(6)) if it was prepared in anticipation of litigation rather than in the ordinary course of business, or if the source of the information within the report is unidentified and thus lacks trustworthiness.
Facts:
- On the evening of June 28, 1989, Cheryle Ann Scheerer and her husband John visited a Hardee's restaurant.
- Shortly before their visit, a Hardee's employee had watered the plants around the restaurant.
- After exiting the restaurant, Mrs. Scheerer was walking across the parking lot when she slipped and fell behind a parked car.
- The Scheerers believed the fall was caused by a slippery surface created by a combination of water from the plant watering and pre-existing oil and grease deposits on the parking lot.
- A Hardee's employee prepared an internal 'incident report' following the fall.
Procedural Posture:
- Cheryle Ann Scheerer and John Scheerer sued Hardee’s Food Systems, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri for personal injuries.
- The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Hardee's.
- The Scheerers appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the summary judgment and remanded the case for a trial.
- Following a trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Hardee's.
- The Scheerers' motion for a new trial was denied by the district court, which then entered a final judgment for Hardee's.
- The Scheerers (appellants) appealed this judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, with Hardee's as the appellee.
Premium Content
Subscribe to Lexplug to view the complete brief
You're viewing a preview with Rule of Law, Facts, and Procedural Posture
Issue:
Is an incident report prepared by an employee after a customer's accident, which was created for potential litigation and contains information from an unidentified source, admissible as a business record under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6)?
Opinions:
Majority - McMillian, Circuit Judge
No. The incident report is not admissible as a business record because it lacks the trustworthiness required by the exception. The court reasoned that the report was inadmissible for two primary reasons. First, it was prepared in anticipation of litigation, not in the ordinary course of Hardee's regular business of operating a restaurant. The form's own instructions to forward copies to the claims office and Risk Management Department demonstrated its purpose was for legal defense, not routine business operations. Second, the report contained a statement from an unidentified 'friend' about Mrs. Scheerer's shoes, and without knowing the source of this information, its reliability and trustworthiness could not be verified.
Analysis:
This case provides a crucial clarification on the limits of the business records exception under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6). It establishes that documents created primarily for a company's legal defense, even if created routinely after accidents, do not meet the 'ordinary course of business' requirement. The ruling emphasizes that the exception's rationale is the inherent reliability of records generated for the actual operation of a business, a reliability that is absent when litigation is the motivating factor. This precedent forces courts to scrutinize the purpose behind such documents, preventing companies from introducing potentially self-serving reports created with a legal strategy in mind.
