Perry v. Parker
Decision Date | 29 May 1958 |
Citation | 101 N.H. 295,141 A.2d 883 |
Parties | Manuel PERRY, Jr. v. John PARKER. |
Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
John B. Ford, Salem Depot, for the plaintiff, furnished no brief.
Sleeper & Mullavey, Exeter (by brief), for the defendant.
Maps, surveys, plans and plots which are thirty years old, free on their face of suspicion and found in proper custody are admissible in evidence as ancient documents as an exception to the hearsay rule. Lawrence v. Tennant, 64 N.H. 532, 15 A. 543; Twombly v. Lord, 74 N.H. 211, 66 A. 486. The plan in this case, although over twenty-five years old, does not satisfy this test of antiquity and is not classified as an ancient document. 46 A.L.R.2d 1318. There was a suggestion in a dictum in Homer v. Cilley, 14 N.H. 85, 98, that the period might be reduced to twenty years but it died aborning. However, we think the plan was admissible on broader grounds.
As a starting point the following quotation from Ferguson v. Clifford, 37 N.H. 86, 95, is pertinent: Wigmore has emphasized that on the principle of necessity and the principle of circumstantial probability of trustworthiness such evidence is and should be admissible. V Wig.Ev. (3rd ed.) §§ 1631, 1632. See also, State v. Story, 97 N.H. 141, 158, 83 A.2d 142. The fundamental inquiry is not the name or number of the exceptions to the hearsay rule (Ellsworth v. Watkins, 101 N.H. 51, 52, 132 A.2d 136) but whether 'under the circumstances [the evidence] satisfies the reasons which lie behind the exceptions.' McCormick, Evidence (1954) p. 633.
This basic approach was set forth in another connection in Gagnon v. Pronovost, 97 N.H. 500, 503, 92 A.2d 904, 906: ...
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