Opinion ID: 3183425
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Loan Documents

Text: Crawford’s next evidentiary challenge concerns the loan documents themselves. The District Court admitted 34 such documents into evidence. Only three—the mortgage itself, the adjustable rate note, and the adjustable rate rider—were originals (that is, actually signed in ink). The others were photocopies. Crawford argues that, for several reasons, the photocopied documents were inadmissible. We are not convinced. Crawford first contends that the loan documents should have been excluded as hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 802. This argument is easily rejected. The rule against hearsay bars introduction of an out‐of‐court statement only if it is offered to prove the truth of what it asserts. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c), 802. Defendants offered the loan documents not to demonstrate the truth of any assertions contained therein, but for either of two permissible purposes. The first was to show that Crawford entered into the loan agreement. This point was susceptible of proof without reference to the truth of any assertions in the documents because the “statements” introduced (i.e., the information in the documents, combined with Crawford’s signature) carried independent legal force: they constituted a contract. See United States v. Dupree, 706 F.3d 131, 137 (2d Cir. 2013) (statements that in themselves affect the 8 legal rights of parties are not hearsay). Defendants’ second purpose was simply to show that Crawford had received the disclosures that TILA mandates. The presence of Crawford’s signature on the pages containing those disclosures achieved that end quite apart from the truth of what the documents asserted. See George v. Celotex Corp., 914 F.2d 26, 30 (2d Cir. 1990) (demonstrating notice is a permissible nonhearsay purpose). Resisting this conclusion, Crawford argues that the loan documents cannot accomplish these nonhearsay purposes unless they are what they purport to be—i.e., loan documents bearing Crawford’s true signature—and are therefore inadmissible hearsay because there is no evidence (according to Crawford) that she actually signed the agreement. But this is not a hearsay objection. Whether Crawford signed the papers or not, defendants did not offer them to prove the truth of whatever assertions they might contain. The rule against hearsay has nothing to say about them. Crawford’s argument in fact concerns authentication, not hearsay. Federal Rule of Evidence 901(a) requires that an item of evidence be “authenticated” through introduction of evidence sufficient to warrant a finding that the item is what the proponent says it is. “Rule 901 does not erect a particularly high hurdle” and is “satisfied if sufficient proof has been introduced so that a reasonable juror could find in favor of authenticity or identification.” United States v. Tin Yat Chin, 371 F.3d 31, 37‐38 (2d Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Defendants met this standard with respect to the photocopied loan documents. They introduced 9 testimony from several witnesses tending to demonstrate that the documents were what defendants claimed they were (that is, true copies of originals signed by Crawford, rather than fakes). Melissa Olivera, a Franklin Credit employee, testified that she had seen the original loan documents and that the photocopies faithfully reflected the originals. See Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(1) (an item of evidence may be authenticated through testimony of a witness with knowledge). Defendants’ handwriting expert, Andrew Sulner, testified that, in his opinion, the signatures on the documents were Crawford’s, and that the signatures did not appear to have been forged mechanically or added to the documents digitally. See Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(3) (an item of evidence may be authenticated through “[a] comparison with an authenticated specimen by an expert witness”). And Decarolis, as discussed, testified that he had met with Crawford to close a refinancing transaction and had no reason to think she had not signed all of the relevant paperwork. This evidence easily cleared the hurdle of Rule 901(a). Finally, we reject Crawford’s argument that admission of the photocopies violated the so‐called “best evidence” rule. Federal Rule of Evidence 1002 provides that if a party wishes to prove the content of a writing, it generally must do so by introducing the original. But this command is subject to a handful of exceptions. As relevant here, an original is not required, and secondary evidence may be admitted to prove the content of a writing, if “all the originals are lost or destroyed, and not by the proponent acting in 10 bad faith.” Fed. R. Evid. 1004(a).2 It is for the trial court to determine whether these factual predicates—which the proponent must prove by a preponderance of the evidence—have been satisfied. See Fed. R. Evid. 104(a), 1008; Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 592 n.10 (1993). The District Court did not “abuse its discretion” in concluding that the original loan documents had been lost, and not by defendants’ bad faith. As has been discussed, defendants presented evidence from Olivera, Sulner, and Decarolis indicating that originals had once existed (a necessary condition of showing that they went missing, and a matter of dispute in this case). Testimony 2 We pause to note an oddity. The District Court determined that the copies were admissible under Rule 1004(a) without considering whether they might be admitted under Federal Rule of Evidence 1003. It is not perfectly clear why that is so: the photocopies appear to qualify as “duplicates” under Federal Rule of Evidence 1001(e), and Rule 1003 provides that “[a] duplicate is admissible to the same extent as the original unless a genuine question is raised about the original’s authenticity or the circumstances make it unfair to admit the duplicate.” It has been suggested in some quarters that if a duplicate is inadmissible under Rule 1003 because of a genuine question about the original’s authenticity, it should not be admitted through the backdoor of Rule 1004. See, e.g., Charles Alan Wright & Victor James Gold, 31 Federal Practice and Procedure: Evidence § 8003 (1st ed. 2000). If this rule is sound (an issue on which we intimate no view), its corollary should prevent a party from evading the test of Rule 1003 by seeking in the first instance to admit a duplicate through Rule 1004—as apparently occurred in this case. But we need not consider this question. Crawford did not argue below that Rule 1003 bore at all on the admissibility of the photocopies, and she does not so argue here. We will therefore assume that the photocopies’ admissibility may properly be considered under the framework of Rule 1004. 11 from multiple sources demonstrated that the originals were no longer in defendants’ possession, see App. 134, 253, and Olivera testified that they had been sent to prior counsel in 2009 and never seen again, Defs.’ App. 27. Prior counsel, for its part, had informed Crawford in 2009 that it had in its possession a few original documents from Crawford’s loan file (the originals later introduced into evidence) but said nothing about the rest. App. 135. Though it is true, as Crawford stresses, that defendants provided the District Court with little information concerning the extent of their search for the originals, we cannot say that the Court “abused its discretion” in determining that the documents, absent from defendants’ files and evidently from prior counsel’s, had been lost. Nor was the Court unjustified in concluding that defendants had not acted in bad faith. It considered and found wanting Crawford’s arguments regarding irregularities in the loan file and purported inconsistencies in defendants’ testimony. It acted well within its discretion in so doing.