Opinion ID: 1908937
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Wright v. Tatham and the Implied Assertions Doctrine

Text: The implied assertions doctrine focuses on the implications or inferences contained within or drawn from an utterance, as distinguished from the declaration's literal contents. The evidentiary treatment of implied assertions has been the subject of legal debate and controversy for many years, and has been addressed often since the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Courts around the country are split as to how such evidence should be treated. The starting point for a discussion of the implied assertion doctrine is the English case of Wright v. Doe d. Tatham, 112 Eng. Rep. 488 (Exch. Ch. 1837) and 47 Rev. Rep. 136 (H.L.1838). The case involved a will and the competency of the testator. The decedent Marsden had left his estate to his steward Wright. Marsden's heir at law, Admiral Tatham, challenged the will on grounds of testamentary incapacity. In defense of the will, before the Court of King's Bench, Wright sought to introduce several letters that Marsden had received from various correspondents. One letter concerned a legal dispute, three concerned business or politics, one thanked Marsden for having appointed the writer to a curateship, and one described a cousin's voyage to America. Wright, 112 Eng. Rep. 490-92. Wright did not seek to prove the truth of any explicit factual statement within the letters. Wright argued that the letters were composed in such a way as to indicate that their writers believed Marsden sane and of normal intelligence. From the writers' belief in Marsden's competence, Wright argued, one could infer that Marsden was competent. The letters were excluded as hearsay. On appeal in the Exchequer Chamber, Baron Parke explained as follows: [P]roof of a particular fact ... implying a statement or opinion of a third party on the matter in issue, is inadmissable in all cases where such a statement or opinion not on oath would be of itself inadmissable; and, therefore, in this case the letters which are offered only to prove the competence of the testator, that is the truth of the implied statements therein contained, were properly rejected, as the mere statement or opinion of the writer would certainly have been inadmissable. Id. at 516-17. In reaching his conclusion, Baron Parke introduced the oft-quoted discussion of a sea captain, who after examining his ship carefully, left on an ocean voyage with his family aboard. According to Baron Parke, the captain's conduct would constitute hearsay if offered to prove that the ship had been seaworthy. Id. at 516. Baron Parke used the illustration to show that such nonverbal conduct would nevertheless constitute hearsay because its value as evidence depended on the belief of the actor. This illustration was important in the court's analysis because the main problem sought to be avoided by the rule against hearsayan inability to cross-examine the declarantis the same whether or not the assertion is implied from a verbal statement or implied from nonverbal conduct. Thus, assertions that are relevant only as implying a statement or opinion of the absent declarant on the matter at issue constitute hearsay in the same way the actual statement or opinion of the absent declarant would be inadmissible hearsay. State v. Dullard, 668 N.W.2d 585, 591 (Iowa 2003) (citations omitted). For our purposes, Baron Parke's reasoning, and the common-law view, may be expressed as follows: (1) An out-of-court statement is hearsay when offered to establish the truth of a proposition expressed therein; (2) A letter stating I believe Marsden to be competent would be hearsay if offered to prove that Marsden was competent; (3) These lettersof which the tone and content imply a belief in Marsden's competenceare being offered as the functional equivalents of letters directly professing a belief in Marsden's competence; (4) Thus, as offered, these letters express the proposition that Marsden is competent; and (5) Therefore, these letters are hearsay if offered to prove Marsden's competence. Stated more generally, the doctrine holds that where a declarant's out-of-court words imply a belief in the truth of X, such words are hearsay if offered to prove that X is true. In its original Wright v. Tatham form, the doctrine did not inquire into the declarant's intentbeliefs communicated accidentally by implication are as much implied assertions as beliefs expressed purposefully in an indirect manner. As evidenced by the sea captain hypothetical, the doctrine also did not distinguish between words and non-verbal conduct.