In appellate practice, an error committed by a lower court during a trial, but not prejudicial to the rights of the party and for which the court will not reverse the judgment.
Error committed during a trial that was corrected or was not serious enough to affect the outcome of a trial and therefore was not sufficiently harmful (prejudicial) to be reversed on appeal.
Error committed during trial which was not serious enough to affect outcome of trial and thus is not grounds for reversal. Compare reversible error.
in an appellate decision, a holding that there was an error committed during the trial court case, but that the error was not so significant as to influence or affect the outcome of the case
An error committed during a trial that was corrected or was not serious enough to affect the outcome of a trial. This kind of error is not prejudicial enough to cause reversal.
An error of law that does not materially prejudice the substantial rights of the accused.
A harmless error is a mistaken evidentiary ruling of a trial judge that, although clearly mistaken, does not meet the burden for a losing party to reverse the original decision of the trier of fact on appeal, or to warrant a new trial. The general burden when arguing that evidence was improperly excluded or included is to show that the proper ruling by the trial judge may have, on the balance of probabilities, resulted in the opposite determination of fact. A harmless error is usually one where the evidence had no relevance to the issues to be decided by the trier of fact, evidence admitted actually helped the party seeking the reversal, or the remaining evidence was overwhelmingly against the party seeking reversal.