Also known as: materials · materiality · materialities · material fact · material evidence
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A fact, element, or item of information that has a tendency to influence a legal decision, proceeding, or transaction.
Maria Morales served discovery responses on Mirage Hotels that included internal memos prepared in anticipation of litigation. Mirage Hotels promptly notified Maria that the memos qualified as trial-preparation material and demanded their return. Maria sequestered the documents and refrained from further use until the court resolved the claim.
Michael Miller prepared a detailed timeline of events for his attorney after receiving a complaint from Marathon Logistics. The timeline was created solely to assist counsel in anticipated litigation. When Marathon sought production, the court treated the timeline as protected work-product material.
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Melanie Morris, an officer at Matrix Technologies, learned of a pending regulatory inquiry that directly affected the company's compliance obligations. She failed to inform the board even though the inquiry fell within her functional responsibilities. The board later claimed she breached her duty by withholding material information.
Monica Morgan was charged with theft after taking merchandise from Mercury Industries. The prosecution had to prove she acted with the required mental state regarding each material element of the offense, including her knowledge that the items belonged to the store.
Ming Ma was assigned to preside over a contract dispute involving Mariam Mansour. Ming had previously testified as a material witness in a related administrative hearing concerning the same transaction. Ming promptly recused herself under the applicable judicial conduct rule.
A lawyer who had represented a client in a prior matter joined a new firm. The firm screened the lawyer from any participation in a substantially related case because another lawyer remaining at the firm possessed confidential information material to the dispute.
Materiality requires that the fact bear on an issue actually in dispute under the substantive law, whereas relevance only asks whether the evidence tends to make a proposition more or less likely. A fact may be relevant yet immaterial if it does not affect any element the jury must decide.
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An officer must disclose information known to be material to the superior officer or board within the scope of the officer's functions. The duty arises only when the officer actually knows both the information and its materiality to the recipient's decision-making.
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A judge must recuse if the judge was a material witness concerning the matter. The test focuses on whether the judge's testimony would concern facts that could influence the outcome of the proceeding.
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The definition covers both tangible material and its intangible equivalent when prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial. Courts therefore extend protection to mental impressions and legal theories even when not reduced to writing.
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…547 (24th ed. 1965). The situation therefore is inherently different from marital intimacy, or bedroom possession of obscene material, or marriage, or procreation, or education, with which Eisenstadt and Griswold, Stanley, Loving, Skinner , and Pierce and Meyer were respectively concerned. As we have intimated…