Autochina Limited v. Kenneth Huang , 420 F. App'x 894 ( 2011 )

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
_________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-10902 MARCH 29, 2011
_________________________ JOHN LEY
CLERK
D.C. Docket No. 1:09-cv-20585-PCH
AUTOCHINA LIMITED,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
KENNETH HUANG,
a.k.a. Huang Jian-Hua,
Defendant-Appellee.
_________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
_________________________
(March 29, 2011)
Before MARCUS and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and MILLS,* Senior District
Judge.
PER CURIAM:
*
Honorable Richard Mills, Senior United States District Judge for the Central District of
Illinois, sitting by designation.
Plaintiff-appellant Autochina Limited (“Autochina”) appeals from a jury
verdict in favor of defendant-appellee Kenneth Huang (“Huang”). Autochina
contends on appeal that the district court erred in numerous evidentiary rulings
during the course of trial.
“We review a district court’s ruling on the admissibility of evidence for
abuse of discretion, and evidentiary rulings will be overturned only if the moving
party establishes that the ruling resulted in a ‘substantial prejudicial effect.’ When
applying an abuse of discretion standard, we must affirm unless we at least
determine that the district court has made a ‘clear error of judgment,’ or has
applied an incorrect legal standard.” Piamba Cortes v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 177
F.3d 1272, 1305-06 (11th Cir. 1999) (citations and quotation marks omitted).
We will not reverse an erroneous evidentiary ruling if the resulting error
was harmless. See United States v. Dickerson, 248 F.3d 1036, 1048 (11th Cir.
2001). “We find an error harmless where the purported error had no substantial
influence on the outcome and sufficient evidence uninfected by error supports the
verdict.” Id.Autochina asserts that the district judge abused his discretion when he
allowed into evidence twelve alleged hearsay statements, testimony regarding
other lawsuits, and the lay testimony of Huang regarding his understanding of
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Chinese law.
Based upon our careful review of the record, we conclude that the district
judge did not abuse his discretion in ruling on the evidentiary issues raised in this
appeal.
Even if we determined that the district judge had abused his discretion, we
would still affirm the jury verdict, because the evidence adduced at trial was
overwhelmingly in favor of Huang. Autochina is unable to demonstrate that the
district court’s rulings resulted in a substantial prejudicial effect.
AFFIRMED.
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