so we're now going to look at at a provision of evidence alluded to earlier this is kind of the classic example from the federal rules of evidence of of the law's exclusion of something that would actually very much help us resolve the facts at issue but that we're not going to allow to come in because we don't want people to change their behavior in a bad way so we've seen something like this with the exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence in criminal procedure we don't want police to go around unlawfully seizing evidence and so we don't allow them to use it when when they do so even though the evidence is perfectly legitimate so the officer finds crack cocaine in the trunk of a car and because he searched the car without adequate suspicion we don't get to we don't get to prosecute uh you know maybe a fairly serious drug dealer so um in a similar way the the federal rules of evidence disallow the use of certain very reliable evidence because we don't want to negatively affect the way that parties go about doing good in the world whereas the fourth amendment's about preventing bad there there are certain federal rules of evidence that that that try to encourage actual good behavior uh and i suppose the police we want to encourage good proper police work so in a way it's it's the same um we're doing the same thing we're discouraging bad behavior and encouraging good behavior um so the the classic example of this is subsequent remedial measures and the idea is that you know let's say let's take our ice cream parlor from the um this example it offered in the video for the simon case the ice cream parlor example where someone trips in front of the ice cream store on the sidewalk we want the ice cream parlor to repair the sidewalk but the fact that they repaired the sidewalk is going to be some evidence that there was something wrong with it to begin with we don't want more people tripping on the sidewalk and we would also like to have in the abstract um both both answers we would like to have the sidewalk repaired and we would like to have have the person who tripped on it compensated for their injury and the and as the law often is you can't have it both ways uh with the exclusionary rule the theory goes you can't have both the admission of unlawfully obtained evidence and good police work with regard to search and seizure here we're admitting we're willing to sacrifice some evidence that would help us get the right answer uh that would let us find liability against the ice cream parlor for not repairing its sidewalk um in order to encourage the sidewalk to be repaired in order not to create an incentive for the sidewalk not to be repaired so let's look at the rule itself and i'll pull up pull up the rule and this of course is in our version of chart of course uh that has the rule and um this is if you take if you look if you open the rule and you and you ask it to print this is the version you get of it sometimes it's a little easier to read it this way i'm going to first show you the federal version of it then i'm going to show you california's version which is worded different but it says basically the same thing and the reason i'm showing you california's version is because we're going to read a california case and they obviously use their rules of evidence with uh with the federal rule however the notion of subsequent remedial measures reads this way when measures are taken that would have made an earlier injury or harm less likely to occur evidence of that subsequent remedial measure the repairing of the of the sidewalk is not admissible to prove negligence culpable conduct a defect in the product or its design or a need for a warning instruction but but and this is a really really important thing you can bring the evidence in for another purpose such as impeachment and we'll get to impeachment later don't worry too much about it right now um or other disputed matters such as ownership or control so like if the um the ice cream parlor said for instance look the city controls the sidewalk not us we couldn't have we're not responsible for the poor condition of the sidewalk and the next day we see the ice cream parlor owner out there repairing the sidewalk that would prove that he had if not ownership at least the ability to repair it control also uh if if the defense is that that the precautions just weren't feasible look it would cost us a half a million dollars to repair the sidewalk that's just too expensive and then after the accident they do repair the sidewalk then that shows that that the um that the defense of of this being just impractical isn't actually true so that's the federal rule again designed to make sure that we don't create disincentives for folks to repair things after accidents have occurred because we just don't want new accidents so california evidence code section 1151 same same idea just give you the wording of it since we're about to read a california case that invokes it when after the occurrence of an event remedial or precautionary measures are taken which if if taken previously would have tended to make the event less likely to occur evidence of that subsequent remedial measure is inadmissible to prove negligence uh or culpable conduct in connection uh with uh with the event so that's the rule and we're now going to get into some cases that lay that out show you how it operates uh the first one will give you the basic notion of the idea and then we'll get into a couple of exceptions