The Unimpeachable Weather Report (Sort of)

Many times in a case you'll need to prove what the weather conditions were like on a particular day. This may be for obvious reasons, such as in an auto accident case. You may also need to prove someone's whereabouts on a particular day or negate reliance or damages in a construction defect case. For whatever reason, you can probably find the data your looking for straight from Uncle Sam, in admissible form no less.

Michael Steven's blog has a great post about obtaining weather data from the National Climatic Data Center (a branch of the Department of Commerce--who knew?).

The question then arises: What do you do when the opposition argues that the data is suspect because it was recorded, produced, and maintained by someone who was likely miles and miles away from the scene?

Having thought about this a bit further in case I did, I went ahead and requested a certified copy of DOC's EIS-C1 Memo, which explains how the data is collected, analyzed, and maintained. Although I've never been able to actually try it out in a case, there doesn't seem to be any reason why you wouldn't be able to read relevant portions of this memo to a jury.

If anyone tries it, let me know how the evidentiary ruling turns out.