Opinion ID: 2165690
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Bureau's Objection to the Inadmissibility of the Bureau's Records

Text: During the trial, plaintiff said that he never returned to Lincoln Downs after his expulsion by Detective Tempest. In his direct examination, Wickman contradicted this testimony by telling the court and jury that he saw plaintiff at the track about a year later. The bureau then attempted to introduce into evidence four reports allegedly kept by it in the course of business which show that plaintiff attempted to gain admittance to the track at least four times in 1963. Wickman stated that the proffered reports were copies and the originals thereof were on file in the bureau's headquarters in New York. He conceded that the copies in court have no signature even though there is a signature line at the bottom of the reports. The bureau sought to introduce these reports as further impeachment of Webbier's statement that he had never come back to the track. While we have real doubts as to the materiality of impeaching a plaintiff on a collateral issue, though we feel that the missing signatures cast a substantial shadow on the authenticity of the so-called business records, we uphold the court's refusal to allow these documents into evidence for a more basic reason. G.L. 1956, § 9-19-13 concerns the admissibility of records made during the course of business and represents our state's efforts to modernize the common-law rule concerning the admission of such evidence. While the statute has been liberally construed as to the type of documents which are embraced by its provisions, there are certain prerequisites which must be satisfied before a record shall be admissible. For a business record to be admissible under our statute, it is required that (1) the record be made in the regular course of business; (2) it must be the regular course of business to make such a record; and (3) it must be made at or near the time of the act, transaction or event. Here, while Wickman stated the reports were kept in the usual course of the bureau's business, there was no evidence adduced as to when the proffered records were executed. This failure in and of itself required that the records be barred from the jury's view.