Self-authenticating document
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| Evidence |
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A self-authenticating document, under the law of evidence in the United States, is any document that can be admitted into evidence at a trial without proof being submitted to support the claim that the document is what it appears to be. Several categories of documents are deemed to be self-authenticating:
- Certified copy of public or business records;
- Official publications of government agencies;
- Newspaper articles;
- Trade inscriptions, such as labels on products;
- Acknowledged documents (wherein the signer also gets a paper notarized); and
- Commercial paper under the Uniform Commercial Code.
Although most
expert testimony to establish the authenticity of the inscription and to get around the obvious hearsay
issue (i.e., to establish, based on common practice within the trade, that the product is what the inscription says it is).
References
- ^ See Dicola v. White Brothers Performance Prods., 158 Cal. App. 4th 666 (2008) (holding that product label was hearsay).
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