Hearsay

Relying on the evidence of an absent witness

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“If you want to prove something in court, the usual rule is that you have to call the person at trial who saw or heard it to give their first-hand account. ”

On this page:

What is Hearsay?
The Hearsay Rule
Examples of Hearsay Evidence
Why is Hearsay Evidence inadmissible?
Exceptions to the Hearsay Rule for unavailable Witnesses
Further Exceptions to the Hearsay Rule
The Hearsay Application
Excluding Hearsay Evidence
Using Hearsay Evidence at trial
Links to Further Information on Hearsay

Image of the word HEARSAY followed by five examples of the same word which both fad out and have increasingly jumbled letters: HEARSYA, HEARASY, HERASAY, HEASRAY, HESARAY

What is Hearsay?

If you want to prove something to be true in court, the usual rule is that you have to call the person at trial who saw or heard it to give their first-hand account.

Where this witness is unavailable, you cannot get round the problem by:

Calling a third party to tell the court what the original witness told them about it; or
Producing a written witness statement or other document to prove it, even if this is from the original witness and contains their first-hand account of what took place.

This type of evidence is known as Hearsay, i.e. evidence intended to prove something as true from a witness who is not in court to give that testimony him/herself.