Also known as: hearsay on hearsay · double hearsay · multiple hearsay
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A composite out-of-court statement containing multiple layers of assertions offered for their truth. Each layer must independently qualify under a hearsay exception or exclusion for the entire statement to be admissible.
Lillian called a research coordinator who recounted that a nurse had told her the principal investigator reported an executive admission about cardiac risks. The executive admission qualified as a party-opponent statement. The nurse statement qualified as an excited utterance made shortly after learning of the death. The principal investigator layer lacked any qualifying exception and caused exclusion of the entire chain.
A plaintiff offered testimony that a branch manager had said another bank official had stated she could not become a manager unless flatchested. The manager layer qualified as a vicarious admission by an agent on a matter within the scope of employment. The inner official layer also qualified as a vicarious admission. The court admitted the combined statement because both layers met the standard.
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 caseEach constituent statement must independently satisfy a hearsay exception or exclusion. Failure of any single layer renders the entire composite inadmissible.
Supporting sources
The principal investigator report to the nurse occurred two days after the event in a routine meeting and fit no exception such as excited utterance or business record. The outer layers qualified but the gap in the chain barred admission.
Supporting sources
Rule 805 itself addresses only whether each layer fits an exception. Personal knowledge is a separate foundational requirement that may still be demanded under Rule 602 or Rule 403 even when an exception applies.