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Downloaded Documents Ruled Inadmissible Hearsay
In Crookes v. De Simone, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that documents downloaded by the plaintiff from the openpolitics.ca website were inadmissible as evidence of the defendant’s involvement with that website and certain allegedly libelous articles published on it. The documents at issue appeared to be minutes of meetings of the steering committee of the openpolitics.ca website and listed the defendant as a member of the committee, a fact which the defendant denied. The court held that the documents were hearsay and not admissible either as business records or under the principled approach. Under the principled approach, in order to meet the test of necessity, the plaintiff would need to show that evidence of the same value could not be expected to be obtained from the same or other sources. However, the court characterized the downloaded documents as the “internet posting of an unknown source” and held that there were many potential sources of the evidence that were of higher value. Regarding reliability, the court found that the documents did not disclose who made the statement that the defendant was a member of the committee and there were no circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness that would justify the admission of the documents without the opportunity for cross-examination. Accordingly, the tests of necessity and reliability were not met.
For a copy of the decision, visit: