Party Admissions in U.S. Law
In the USA, a party admission, in the law of evidence, is any statement made by a declarant who is a party to a lawsuit, which is offered as evidence against that party. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, such a statement is admissible to prove the truth of the statement itself, meaning that the statement itself is not considered hearsay at all. This is a category of exemptions to the inadmissibility of out-of-court statements. When the term "exemption" is used here, it does not mean that the statement is an "exception" to the hearsay rule. Rather, a party admission is classified as "nonhearsay" by the Federal Rules of Evidence.
The statement is admissible even if the declarant had no basis for knowing the truth of the statement. For example, if an employee rushes to tell the director of a trucking company that one of his trucks has been in an accident, and the director says, "oh, we're behaving so negligently, lately," that statement will be admissible - even though the manager had no reason to know that this particular accident was the result of negligence.
The exemption permits one party to offer the out-of-court statement of any opponent party. It may not be used by a party to offer that party's own out-of-court statement. However, under the common-law doctrine of completeness, a party may possibly be able to admit some statements of their own, if a party admission exemption allows the opponent to admit part of a statement, and the first party wishes to admit the rest of that statement.
Read more about this topic: Party Admission
Famous quotes containing the words party and/or law:
“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devils party without knowing it.”
—William Blake (17571827)
“We accept and welcome ... as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment; the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few; and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.”
—Andrew Carnegie (18351919)