Opinion ID: 2752520
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissible Evidence

Text: At summary judgment, the requisite “genuine dispute,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a), must appear in admissible evidence. See Nooner v. Norris, 594 F.3d 592, 603 (8th Cir. 2010). As evidence of Evans’s and Swyers’s injurious statements, the chiefs offer the minutes of the open Monarch board meetings and news media articles purporting to quote or paraphrase Evans and Swyers. The newspaper articles are “‘rank hearsay’” that do not fit a hearsay exception. Id. (quoting Miller v. Tony & Susan Alamo Found., 924 F.2d 143, 147 (8th Cir. 1991)); see also Jones v. McNeese, 746 F.3d 887, 899 (8th Cir. 2014). While the allegedly defamatory statements themselves may not be hearsay, see Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2), (d)(2)(A), the second level—each newspaper’s out-of-court assertion that Evans and Swyers in fact made these statements—is hearsay. See Jones, 746 F.3d at 899; Nooner, 594 F.3d at 603. We will consider only the statements in the board meetings’ minutes.