Requests for Admission

Requests for Admission

Rule 36 differs from the other devices in this chapter because it finds nothing out. Depositions, interrogatories, and Rule 34 requests deliver information to the requester, who must still offer it at trial and prove it. A request to admit starts from the opposite posture: the requester already knows the fact or already holds the document, and asks the opponent to concede it.¹ A concession does not become evidence to be weighed. It becomes a given for the rest of the case, so trial time goes only to what is genuinely contested.²

Rule 36(a)(1) names two targets. A request may ask the recipient to admit the truth of matters relating to facts, the application of law to fact, or opinions about either, and it may ask the recipient to admit the genuineness of described documents.³ The first target replaces witness-by-witness proof of facts nobody will dispute. The second replaces formal proof of authenticity, which can be troublesome, slow, and expensive even when no one doubts the document.⁴

Because the payoff is a matter taken out of dispute, the rule attaches a consequence to silence that the other devices lack: a matter is admitted unless, within 30 days after service, the recipient serves a written answer or objection addressed to the matter and signed by the party or its attorney.⁵ A recipient who ignores a request can lose the point without ever deciding to concede it. The subsections below take up what a request may ask and how it must be drafted, what silence costs, what a proper answer or objection contains, and how firmly an admission binds.

Scope and Form

Rule 36(a)(1) lets a party serve on any other party a written request to admit, for purposes of the pending action only, the truth of any matters within the scope of Rule 26(b)(1) that relate to facts, the application of law to fact, or opinions about either, along with the genuineness of any described documents.⁶ That sentence sets four limits. The request runs only to a party, it must fall within the ordinary scope of discovery, it must fit one of the listed subjects, and its effect stays inside the case in which it is made. Rule 36(a)(2) adds drafting requirements, on separate statement and attached copies, that decide whether a request is proper in form even when its subject is proper.

Scope is the same Rule 26(b)(1) standard that governs every other device: a matter is open to a request if it relates to a party’s claim or defense, and it need not be admissible in evidence to qualify.⁷ The 1970 amendments settled the point for Rule 36. Some authority had suggested that admissibility was the key, but the amendments deleted the word “relevant” and allowed requests about any matter within the scope of Rule 26(b), which ended that argument.⁸ A single definition of scope also means that the choice of device does not change what may be asked. A fact that could be explored at a deposition or by interrogatory can equally be put to the opponent as a proposition to concede.

The phrase for purposes of the pending action only limits what an admission can do. An admission under Rule 36 binds the party in that lawsuit and cannot be used against the party in any other proceeding.⁹ The limit makes concession safe. A party deciding whether to admit that a delivery occurred on a stated date is weighing the saving of trial time in this case. If the concession could be quoted back in a later suit with different stakes, a careful party would deny everything and the device would narrow nothing.

The rule’s list names three kinds of matter, and the first is the plainest: facts, such as whether the defendant received a shipment on a stated date. The second, the application of law to fact, draws more doubt, because it sounds like asking the opponent to decide the case. The text permits it. A request may ask a defendant to admit that it was negligent, and a responding party generally cannot object solely because the request calls for a legal conclusion, so long as the conclusion relates to the facts of the case.¹⁰ A plaintiff in a contract case may likewise ask the defendant to admit that an attached document is a contract signed by both parties, which joins a legal characterization to a fact.¹¹ The third kind, opinions about facts or about the application of law to fact, extends the same reach to matters of judgment. Exam answers go wrong by treating every request that touches a legal conclusion as objectionable. The line runs between law applied to the facts of the case and law standing alone.

The list has no category for an abstract proposition of law with no tie to the case. Rule 33 pairs the same two subjects: an interrogatory is not objectionable merely because it asks for an opinion or contention relating to fact or to the application of law to fact.¹² The reason follows from the device’s purpose, which is to remove from trial what the evidence will not genuinely contest. A bare statement of what a statute provides leaves the opponent no fact to concede, so conceding it would shorten no proof.

The two requests differ only in whether the law is tied to the case. The first asks the plaintiff to recite a rule anyone can look up, and no answer narrows what trial must resolve. The second asks about timing in this action, so an admission would settle a matter the trial would otherwise have to decide.

Some requests press harder than negligence, and an answer has to handle the objection with care. In one familiar fact pattern, a plaintiff serves requests asking each defendant to admit liability, reserving only damages for trial. Both defendants object that the requests call for legal conclusions, and the objections are sustained.¹³ The case for sustaining them is that liability is the final legal conclusion in the case, so the request asks the defendant to surrender the whole dispute. The better view is that the label should not govern: an admission of liability in a negligence suit reduces to an admission of negligence, which applies law to fact and which the rule allows.¹⁴ A complete answer adds that some jurisdictions refuse requests directed to ultimate issues, and a court sitting in one of them would sustain the objection.¹⁵ The federal rule is less restrictive. A party cannot object solely because a request goes to a core issue, and it may instead deny the matter in good faith, which places the matter in issue for trial.¹⁶

The second target is documents. A request may ask the recipient to admit the genuineness of a described document, meaning that the document is what it purports to be, such as a contract that really is the one the parties signed.¹⁷ The word described matters, because the recipient must be able to tell which paper is meant, and Rule 36(a)(2) supplies the means: a request about a document must be accompanied by a copy unless the document is, or has been, otherwise furnished or made available for inspection and copying.¹⁸ A party cannot responsibly call a document genuine, or deny that it is, without seeing it. The exception follows the same logic, since a document the recipient already holds, or has been allowed to inspect and copy, would add nothing by being attached again.

Documents are where the device earns most of its keep. A party can usually find enough ambiguity in the evidence to deny an ultimate contention, such as the claim that a design defect known to the defendant caused the accident, but authenticity is seldom in real doubt. If the responding party admits it, the requester is spared the burden and expense of authenticating the document at trial.¹⁹

The other form requirement is that each matter be separately stated.²⁰ The reason lies in what silence costs. A matter is admitted unless the recipient serves a signed written answer or objection addressed to it within 30 days,²¹ so a request that bundles one true proposition with one doubtful one leaves the recipient unable to admit the first without conceding the second, or to protect the second without denying the first. The rules do let a party who must qualify an answer in good faith specify the part admitted and deny the rest,²² but that repair is for awkward requests and gives a requester no reason to draft them that way. Separate statements put the work of precision on the requester, who knows what is wanted, and they produce admissions that line up one for one with the points trial will no longer need to prove.

These requirements show what the device is for. A request must state the matter to be conceded or attach the document to be authenticated, so the requester must already know the fact or hold the document, and the device simplifies trial without finding anything out.²³ Refusal can carry a price. A party that fails to admit a matter the requester later proves at trial may be ordered to pay the reasonable expenses of proof, subject to exceptions such as a reasonable ground to think the party might prevail on the issue.²⁴ The details of that exposure belong with the sanctions rules.

Deemed Admissions

Rule 36(a)(3) attaches to silence a consequence that no other discovery device carries. A matter is admitted unless, within 30 days after being served, the party to whom the request is directed serves on the requesting party a written answer or objection addressed to the matter and signed by the party or its attorney; a shorter or longer time may be stipulated under Rule 29 or ordered by the court.²⁶ The admission is self-executing. The requester files no motion, the court enters no order, and no one sends a reminder that the clock is running. The matter is admitted when the 30th day passes without a qualifying response. Silence is therefore one of the recipient’s options, alongside admitting, denying, objecting, or explaining why it cannot answer, and it is the only option that concedes the point without anyone deciding to concede it.²⁷ A lawyer who overlooks a request can lose an issue to a calendar error alone.

Each element of the response test has its own reason. The deadline exists because the device narrows the case only if requests reliably draw a reply; its purpose is to expedite trial and spare the parties the cost of proving facts that will not be disputed.²⁸ If silence cost the recipient nothing, a recipient could stall, the requester would hold no usable answer, and every point would still have to be proved. Making silence an admission removes the incentive to stall, because the recipient must commit to an admission, a denial, or an objection. The requirement that the response be addressed to the matter lets the requester see, request by request, what is conceded and what is contested. The signature requirement identifies a person, the party or its attorney, who answers for the paper, so an anonymous or unsigned paper cannot count. The stipulation and court-order language is the relief valve, since a recipient facing many requests can obtain more time before the deadline arrives.

A response that is timely, signed, and addressed to each matter prevents the automatic admission. A defendant’s lawyer who serves a signed written answer and objection to each request on day 28 has kept every matter from being deemed admitted, even for a matter the lawyer only objects to, because the rule asks whether a signed objection was served and leaves the soundness of the objection for separate decision. The same papers served on day 31 arrive after the matters have already been admitted.

A late answer does not cure the problem by arriving. Served after the period closes, it leaves the matter admitted, although the court has discretion to avoid the admission when the answer is untimely.²⁹ The section on effect and withdrawal below takes up when a court will permit an admission to be withdrawn or amended. A recipient should treat that discretion as a rescue to be sought and not as a deadline extension to be assumed.

The signature requirement is easy to overlook, and a careless response shows its force.

The usual exam error is to treat silence under Rule 36 as silence under the other devices, where a recipient who fails to respond leaves the requester to seek a court order. Here the consequence arrives first and the burden of seeking relief falls on the party that stayed silent. The sound sequence is to count 30 days from service, adjust only for a stipulation or an order, and then check that a signed written answer or objection reached each matter within that time.

Answers and Objections

A timely, signed response keeps a matter from being admitted by default, and the next question is what that response must say. If a matter is not admitted, the answer must specifically deny it or state in detail why the answering party cannot truthfully admit or deny it. A denial must fairly respond to the substance of the matter. When good faith requires a party to qualify an answer or deny only part of a matter, the answer must specify the part admitted and qualify or deny the rest. And a party may give lack of knowledge or information as its reason for failing to admit or deny only if it states that it has made reasonable inquiry and that the information it knows or can readily obtain is insufficient to enable it to admit or deny.³¹ Rule 36(a)(4) thus leaves a responding party three ways to answer without admitting: a specific denial, a detailed explanation of why it cannot answer, or an admission in part with the rest qualified or denied.

Each clause blocks a different way of defeating the device’s purpose, which is to expedite trial and spare the parties the cost of proving facts that will not be disputed.³² The demand for a specific denial lets the requester read the response matter by matter and see what remains contested. The requirement that a denial fairly respond to the substance prevents a party from escaping a plainly true matter by quarreling with one word in it, and the duty to admit part and deny the rest makes that requirement workable: a party with a genuine point about one word concedes what is true and preserves its dispute over the remainder. The reasonable-inquiry condition addresses ignorance used as a shield, since a party could otherwise escape any request about its own affairs by never looking. The standard is what the party knows or can readily obtain, though. The responder need not conduct a detailed search that would amount to proving the other side’s case, but some inquiry must be made.³³

Both duties attach to the answer itself. The rule makes lack of knowledge a permissible reason only if the party states that it has made reasonable inquiry, and it requires an answer that denies part of a matter to specify the part admitted.³⁴ A statement of inquiry or a qualification offered in some other paper, such as an interrogatory answer, is not the statement the rule calls for. The response to the request is where it belongs.

Holmgren v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. shows what follows when a party denies without regard to substance. The record supported the district court’s conclusion that the core of each request for admission concerned indisputable historical fact. If State Farm had objections based on matters other than historical fact, good faith required it to qualify its denials so that they conceded the historical facts, and its argument that the requests were indivisible was without merit.³⁵

Benz v. D.L. Evans Bank shows the price of a denial that cannot be justified. The trial court found that the matter the buyer asked the bank to admit was true, found that the bank had no justification under the rule for its failure to admit, and awarded the buyer $9,915 in attorney fees as the reasonable expenses of proving it.³⁶ That award applies the expense-shifting exposure noted in the discussion of scope and form.

The two decisions teach one discipline. A party with a real dispute over part of a request protects it by conceding the true part and qualifying the rest in its response. A party that denies the whole request to shelter the disputed part risks being held to a good-faith standard it did not meet, and it risks paying for the proof it forced. The usual exam error is to treat a flat denial as the safe move when a request is only partly doubtful.

A party that does not want to answer may object instead, and Rule 36(a)(5) sets two conditions on the objection. The grounds for objecting must be stated, and a party must not object solely on the ground that the request presents a genuine issue for trial.³⁸ The stated-grounds condition gives the requester and the court something to evaluate, since a bare objection cannot be tested, and recognized grounds include irrelevance and privilege.³⁹ The second condition protects the device where it matters most. If a party could refuse any request that touched a disputed point, the requests aimed at the heart of the case would be the easiest to resist, and those are the requests most likely to narrow the trial. The federal rule closes that route and leaves an honest alternative: a party that believes it should prevail may in good conscience deny the matter, which places it at issue for trial and at least frames the main issues.⁴⁰

An answer or objection that falls short does not leave the requester without a remedy. The requesting party may move to determine the sufficiency of an answer or objection. Unless the court finds an objection justified, it must order that an answer be served, and on finding that an answer does not comply with the rule, it may order either that the matter is admitted or that an amended answer be served.⁴¹ The court may defer its final decision until a pretrial conference or a specified time before trial, and Rule 37(a)(5) governs the award of expenses on the motion.⁴² The two orders give the court a graded response. An amended answer fits a response that was careless or overcautious, and an order deeming the matter admitted fits an evasion the requester should not have to keep contesting. Deferral suits the case in which the evidence showing whether a denial was reasonable is still developing. This route also differs from the default admission taught above. That admission answers silence and operates by itself, whereas a signed response addressed to the matter avoids it, so an answer that is merely inadequate reaches the court only if the requester moves.⁴³ A denial that proves unjustified also carries a price after the fact, because if the requester later proves the matter, the court may order the party that failed to admit it to pay the reasonable expenses of proof, including attorney’s fees, unless an exception applies, such as a reasonable ground to believe the party might prevail on the matter.⁴⁴

Effect and Withdrawal

A matter admitted under Rule 36 is conclusively established unless the court, on motion, permits the admission to be withdrawn or amended.⁴⁶ The sentence has two halves. The first makes the device worth using: a conclusively established matter is no longer open in the case, so the fact-finder takes it as a given and the party that made the admission cannot reopen it with contrary evidence.⁴⁷ The second supplies a release valve that runs only through the court. An admitting party that wants out must file a motion, and the admission stands until the court grants it.⁴⁸

Conclusiveness separates Rule 36 from every other device. Deposition testimony, interrogatory answers, and produced documents are evidence: the fact-finder may draw on them, but it weighs them against everything else and reaches its own decision. An admitted matter is not weighed at all.⁴⁹ That difference explains why the device exists, since its purpose is to expedite trial and spare the parties the cost of proving facts that will not be disputed.⁵⁰ If an admission were only another item of evidence, the requester would still have to call witnesses and offer exhibits against a party free to contradict it, and the request would save nothing. Conclusiveness takes the issue out of trial, and it lets the requester stop preparing proof on that point, a reliance that matters once a party asks to take an admission back.

Because conclusiveness can turn a careless concession into a lost issue, the rule lets the court relieve a party of it. The court may permit withdrawal or amendment if doing so would promote the presentation of the merits and the court is not persuaded that it would prejudice the requesting party in maintaining or defending the action on the merits.⁵¹ The rule makes this power subject to Rule 16(e), which this unit does not take up. The two conditions guard different interests. The merits condition looks to the accuracy of the result: a party that admitted a fact by oversight, and has good ground to contest it, would otherwise lose the point on a mistaken concession and not on the evidence, and judges prefer to see cases resolved on the evidence.⁵² The prejudice condition looks to fairness toward the requester, who may have relied on the admission by dropping a witness or leaving a line of proof undeveloped. The harm that counts is harm to the requester’s ability to maintain or defend its case on the merits. The frustration of having to litigate an issue the opponent had withdrawn from contention does not alone qualify, since courts grant withdrawal despite leaving the opponent in exactly that position.⁵³

Even when both conditions are met, the rule says the court may permit withdrawal, and district courts have considerable discretion in applying it.⁵⁴ Accounts of how that discretion plays out differ. One calls withdrawal a very uncommon practice,⁵⁵ while another reports that judges often grant the motion when the admitting party has good ground to contest the fact.⁵⁶ Read together, they suggest a motion that fails when it rests on a change of heart and succeeds when it shows a genuine dispute about the fact and no real harm to the requester.

Timing usually decides the prejudice question, because time is what the requester needs to rebuild its proof.

A party deemed to have admitted a matter by silence cannot cure the problem by serving a full denial a week after the deadline. The matter stays conclusively established until the court, on motion, permits withdrawal or amendment, and the court has discretion in dealing with an untimely answer.⁵⁷ The party should move promptly and put both conditions before the court. The longer the case proceeds on the strength of the admission, the more the requester is likely to have built on it, and that reliance feeds the prejudice question.

The rule also fixes how far an admission reaches. An admission under Rule 36 is not an admission for any other purpose and cannot be used against the party in any other proceeding.⁵⁸ Inside the case the admission is conclusive, and outside it the admission has no force, so a litigant who wants to prove the same fact in another lawsuit must do so with ordinary evidence.⁵⁹

A related protection covers a party facing criminal exposure. Some courts once refused to recognize the privilege against self-incrimination in this setting because an answer to a request for admission may not be used in another proceeding. That reasoning overlooks that an answer, though not usable in itself, may be a link in an incriminating chain. The accepted view therefore gives a party answering requests to admit the same constitutional protection it would have as a witness.⁶⁰