Hearsay Question Forum

[leobowski]

Ah. Good to know, thanks.

[Tanicius]

Ah. Good to know, thanks.

NP. It goes without saying it's a complicated exception. I've seen quite a tendency towards abuse of 803.6 in college mock trial, and I have to imagine young lawyers often have the same misconceptions. A lot of people think that just about anything pertaining to a business qualifies under the exception, but it's really a lot more specific than that - has to be a record (ie a physical or digital document and not just something a person once spoke that happens to pertain to a business), has to have been kept by someone who has knowledge about what the record is, they have to know that the record was never changed since its creation or if it was changed they have to know why and when it happened, and it has to be within the normal course of their duties to have possession of said record in the first place. If you think about it though, all of these caveats make sense. The whole reason records of business are allowed even though they are hearsay is predicated on the assumption that routine business documents are going to be reliable information, and the requirements all work towards ensuring that the record will be reliable.