Litigation terms
Business records exception
The business records exception admits records made and kept in the ordinary course of a regularly conducted activity as an exception to the hearsay rule — the doorway through which most documentary evidence enters trial.
Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) sets the elements: the record was made at or near the time by (or from information transmitted by) someone with knowledge; kept in the course of a regularly conducted activity; making the record was a regular practice; all shown by a qualified witness or a certification — and admission fails if the opponent shows the source or circumstances indicate a lack of trustworthiness.
Why it matters in practice
Medical charts, invoices, maintenance logs, personnel files, and most corporate email exhibits ride through this exception, usually via a records custodian’s certification under FRE 902(11) rather than live testimony — which is why the certification should be requested with the records, not scrambled for at the pretrial conference.
Two recurring traps. First, layered hearsay: the exception covers statements by people inside the business’s reporting chain, not outsiders — the bystander’s account inside a police report, or the patient’s cousin’s statement in a chart, needs its own exception. Second, litigation-driven documents: records prepared for the dispute (incident reports written with counsel involved, post-accident investigations) draw trustworthiness challenges under the doctrine descending from Palmer v. Hoffman.
In the fact record
Admissibility planning attaches at the document level: which records have certifications, which carry embedded third-party statements needing separate doors. Tracking that alongside each source document means the exhibit list inherits the analysis.