Hearsay Evidence

thefifty

Hi all,

Apologies if this has already been dealt with, however I could not find anything relating to same through the search function.


Basically, I am wondering if you have a witness on the stand, of which you are conducting the chief examination, and they were witness to a verbal exchange between the plaintiff and the defendant, (Civil cases), can you ask them, "What did you hear" etc., as both parties are present to be cross examined on this aspect themselves, thus have a "right of response" if you will, or is it still inadmissible?

I do hope that made sense and thanks to anyone who may be able to clear up my confusion on the topic!

dermot_sheehan

Admissible as the witness is merely giving evidence to what they saw and heard.

The hearsay court bars (subject to exceptions) a statement not on oath being admissible to prove the truth of the contents of that statement.

So a witness in this case would be giving evidence that another person said something in their presence, not that it was true.

Reloc8

Actually it is admissible but not for the reasons given above.

The hearsay rule prevents out of court statements being given in evidence where they are tendered to prove the truth of their contents, as opposed to that they were in fact said, as gabhain7 does say. There are a number of exceptions however, one of which is called 'parties present' which is as the OP describes.

Where the parties to the case are present at the scene of the conversation (in this instance) the evidence is of course admissible in every respect; that is because the parties have the opportunity to contradict the evidence of the other side as to what was said etc. (so yes, sort of a right of response).

Of course, the rule against hearsay does operate in general as described by Gabhain7 but in this instance the rule does not apply.

dermot_sheehan

I'm unaware of that particular exception.

My understanding was that a person hearing a conversation and giving evidence about what he heard is not asserting the truth of what he heard, merely asserting what was said in his presence.

My understanding is that it was not caught by the hearsay rule as opposed to being an exception to the hearsay rule.