B. Character Evidence in Civil Cases

1. General rule: Character evidence is not admissible to prove conduct in civil cases.

For example, a defendant cannot offer the testimony of friends (or her own testimony) that she is usually a very careful driver as circumstantial evidence she was probably driving carefully and not negligently on the day of an accident.

2. Character in issue.

Character evidence is occasionally admissible if a trait of character has been placed in issue by the pleadings.

Lawsuits in which character is a material issue are extremely uncommon.

One must be careful not to confuse:

an allegation of particular unsavory behavior (e.g., acted maliciously on a certain day)

with true character (tendency to be malicious on all days and toward all people).

Character is a material issue in the following types of cases:

a) Defamation.

Character is in issue in a defamation case when the defamatory statement falsely accuses the plaintiff of having a general flaw, e.g., accusing Hillary Clinton of being a liar.

Character is not in issue if the defamatory statement falsely accuses the plaintiff of a specific act, e.g., Hillary lied about Benghazi.

https://law.indiana.edu/instruction/tanford/b723/06char/T06.pdf

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So, in this instance, if the defamatory statement was:

"Michael Irvin is a sexual harasser of women," then his character would be at issue and they can introduce specific past instances (since they're trying to prove that Michael Irvin is a sexual harasser of women).

But the defamatory statement was:

"Michael Irvin sexually harassed a Marriott employee on the night of Feb 5th." So, character evidence would be inadmissible in court because this is one SPECIFIC ACT and you can't use character evidence to disprove one SPECIFIC ACT.