When requests for admission ask about the genuineness of documents?

In trial or civil litigation, parties can use discovery techniques to get evidence or admissions to either give support or refute the issues in question. One litigation mechanism is an admission of fact that the opponent must accept or deny the facts that are related to the case or the favor of the document\'s genuineness. On the condition that request for admission genuineness of documents are used appropriately, this can have the effect of restricting the evidence that would be presented to the trial to the facts and issues that will be disputed.

 

A lawsuit could consider a request for admission, in which the party is made to admit or deny the genuineness or authenticity of the document(s) that will be presented during the legal proceedings. For example, a request may state: "Hereby declare that the Exhibit A reproduced in this document is a true and legitimate email of John Smith to Jane Doe dated March 1, 2020."

 

The responding party could next have to give an answer that those were true and Exhibit A is a real email by John Smith to Jane Doe on the specified date. Alternatively, the receiving party could be denied and the party could state doubt towards the authenticity of the email, such as by doubting the validity of the email header or the very farness of the email content.

 

As it is not uncommon for parties other than the requesting one to challenge the authenticity of the document in question, later in the trial the requesting party could put forth the document for authentication and admission as evidence by means of witness testimony. The other option is a summary judgment; this is where the judge can decide to grant the request for admission if the request was denied without reason, the judge will order the responding party to pay the legal costs involved with proving the issue at trial.

 

Production of the documents always becomes as important as documents do often carry the evidence which can be considered crucial in the cases of legal disputes. Soliciting admissions of facts reduces the need to submit to the trial authorized documents that are not authentic and that parties agree upon about the key documents. Such may be a fast way of a managing complex case that would otherwise be combined with a huge number of documents.