Also known as: layered-hearsay · double hearsay · hearsay within hearsay · hearsay on hearsay
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A composite out-of-court statement containing two or more nested assertions offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Each constituent statement must independently qualify under a hearsay exception or exclusion before the entire statement becomes admissible.
Leonard Lowe sues Valley Hospital after a delayed cancer diagnosis. Nurse Lopez testifies that Nurse Kim told her during shift change that the doctor had said the biopsy was negative and no further tests were needed. The court sustains the hearsay objection because neither Kim's statement to Lopez nor the doctor's earlier statement satisfies an exception.
Liam Larson sues Wild Canid Survival & Research Center after a wolf attack. A staff member testifies that the center's director told him an employee had reported the wolf's aggressive behavior earlier that day. The court admits the testimony after determining that both the employee's report and the director's repetition qualify as party-opponent statements under Rule 801(d)(2)(D).
On March 23, 1973, three-year-old Daniel Mahlandt was sent by his mother to retrieve his older brother from a neighbor's home on an adjoining street. His path took him along a walkway next to the Poos residence, where a five-foot chain-link fence separated the walkway from the area in which the wolf Sophie was chained with a six-foot chain. Sophie was an eleven-month-old wolf born at the St. Louis Zoo and later transferred to the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center, Inc. Kenneth Poos, the Center's Director of Education, had been keeping Sophie at his home to take her to schools and institutions for educational programs about wolves. The evening before the incident, Sophie had jumped the fence and attacked a beagle running along the fence. A neighbor who was ill in bed heard a child's screams, went to his window, and saw a boy lying on his back within the enclosure with a wolf straddling him. Within about fifteen seconds the neighbor saw seventeen-year-old Clarke Poos run around the house, get the wolf off the boy, and carry the child away. Clarke found Daniel lying inside the enclosure about three feet from the fence, with Sophie standing back the length of her chain and wailing. Daniel's mother reported that Clarke told her a wolf had gotten Danny and he was dying, though Clarke denied making that statement. Kenneth Poos arrived home while Daniel and his mother were still in the kitchen. Within an hour after arriving home, Poos went to Washington University and left a note on the door of Center president Owen Sexton stating that Sophie had bitten a child that came into the backyard. Later that same day Poos found Sexton at the Tyson Research Center and told him that Sophie had bitten a child that day. A meeting of the directors of the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center, Inc. was held on April 4, 1973, at which Mr. Poos was not present. The minutes of that meeting recorded a great deal of discussion about the legal aspects of the incident of Sophie biting the child. Daniel sustained lacerations of the face, left thigh, left calf, and right thigh, along with abrasions and bruises of the abdomen and chest. No witness saw or knew how Daniel was injured, and examinations of the fence and the wounds raised questions about whether the injuries were caused by the fence rather than by the wolf. The case was tried to a jury in federal district court, which returned a verdict for the defendants. The trial judge had excluded the note, the oral statement to Sexton, and the reference in the corporate minutes on the ground that none of the declarants had personal knowledge of the underlying facts. The matter reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on appeal from those three evidentiary rulings.
View caseLayered hearsay is admissible only when each separate statement in the chain independently satisfies a hearsay exception or exclusion. Rule 805 requires separate analysis of every layer rather than treating the composite statement as a single unit.
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The entire statement is excluded. Courts refuse to admit composite testimony when any single layer fails to qualify, even if other layers would otherwise be admissible.
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Each transmission must meet an exception such as excited utterance or statement for medical diagnosis. A final report made after the emergency has passed typically fails to qualify and blocks admission of the whole chain.
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A non-truth purpose such as showing notice or the content of an assurance removes the statement from hearsay analysis altogether. The proponent must clearly articulate that purpose at trial.
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