Opinion ID: 785414
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Competence To Testify of Plaintiffs' Affiants

Text: 47 The Town argues that, regardless of the strength of plaintiffs' evidence, the age of their proffered affidavits provides an independent basis for affirming the district court's decision in full, because Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(e) requires affidavits to show affirmatively that the affiant is competent to testify. All of plaintiffs' submitted affidavits were prepared shortly after the demonstrations took place — well before plaintiffs filed suit — and are therefore approximately fourteen years old. The Town argues that, given the age of this evidence, plaintiffs should be required to show that the affiants are currently still competent and available to testify. We hold that the district court was entitled to assume that the affiants would be available and competent to testify at trial because the affidavits facially satisfied the requirements of Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e), and because defendant presented no evidence that any of the affiants were no longer available. 48 All forty-four of the affidavits submitted by plaintiffs and not excluded by the district court on other grounds contain sufficient information for the court to infer that the bulk of the statements within them were made on personal knowledge, and all contain evidence that would be admissible at trial. 12 Thus, the affidavits satisfied the requirements of Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e) at the time that they were sworn. Although the age of the affidavits may give rise to speculation that some of the affiants are no longer available to testify at trial, age alone is an insufficient basis upon which to disregard plaintiffs' otherwise admissible evidence. Because attorneys, as officers of the court, are presumed not to offer in opposition to summary judgment evidence that they have no good faith basis to believe will be available or admissible at trial, the burden is on the moving party to demonstrate that facially adequate affidavits that comply with Rule 56(e) should not be considered valid evidence. Here, the Town proffered no evidence that any of the affiants are no longer available, willing, or otherwise competent to testify at trial. In the absence of such evidence, the district court was correct to consider the substance of those affidavits that it did not exclude for other reasons in determining the existence of triable issues of fact. 13 See Bryant v. Bell Atl. Md., Inc., 288 F.3d 124, 135 n. 9 (4th Cir.2002) (assuming that affiants were competent to testify in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary). 49