Determining that the “remoteness” of a prior offense does not affect the admissibility of evidence at trial, the Indiana Supreme Court has affirmed the award of roughly $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages to a man injured by a drunk driver.
The Indiana Supreme Court will hear a case weighing whether HHGregg senior managers are entitled to share in $40 million worth of life insurance proceeds from the 2012 death of then-executive chairman of the board Jerry Throgmartin.
The majority of an Indiana Court of Appeals panel held Thursday that a drunken driver’s decades-old convictions for alcohol-related offenses were irrelevant and prejudicial in a civil suit following a personal-injury crash. A dissenting judge, though, wrote the admissibility of such evidence should go to its weight rather than its age.
A man who admitted fault and negligence for a Lake County drunken-driving crash is appealing damages of $2 million awarded in the case, claiming the jury was wrongly provided evidence of his prior alcohol-related driving convictions that were 17 and 30 years old.