An admission is defined in Section 27, Rule 130 of the Rules of Court as “[t]he act, declaration or omission of a party as to a relevant fact [which] may be given in evidence against him.” In other words, an admission is simply the adverse party’s statement offered in evidence against him.
An admission is an out-of-court statement which is excluded from the hearsay rule and thus admissible in evidence. Admissions are excluded from the definition of hearsay on the theory that their admissibility in evidence is the result of the adversary system rather than the satisfaction of the conditions of the hearsay rule. The party who made the statement or on whom a statement is imputed has the opportunity to contradict or explain the statement. Furthermore, a party can hardly complain that he has a right to cross-examine himself.
An oft-used term is “admission against interest.” The term is based on the widely accepted definition of an admission as “any statement of fact made by a party against his interest or unfavorable to the conclusion for which he contends or is inconsistent with the facts alleged by him.”1 Thus, it has been written that to be admissible, an admission must be “adverse to the admitter’s interest.”2
There is actually no requirement that an admission be against the party’s interest, whether at the time it was made or at the time it is offered in evidence.3 There is nothing in Section 27 of Rule 130 or in any other provision of the Rules of Evidence which requires that the admission be against the party’s interest. A statement qualifies as an admission even if it exonerates the speaker or states claims or justifications but is offered against the adverse party nonetheless.4 Admissions need not be incriminating, inculpatory, against interest, or damaging to be admissible.5 The statement, at the time the party made it, could have been favorable to some interest of the party, or unfavorable, or neutral.6 An adverse party’s statement offered against him is admissible not because it is trustworthy for being against interest, but simply because of the adversarial system of litigation.7 Hence, the use of the term “admission against interest” is inaccurate and misleading.
Some authorities write that although an admission need not be against the party’s interest at the time it is made, it must be “disserving at the time it is offered in evidence against the party-admitter.”8 This view is arguable. There is nothing in the law which imposes such a requirement. Often, of course, an admission is against the party’s interest at the time it is offered, but this is not a requirement but something which arises from the nature of an admission, that is, from it being offered in evidence against the admitter. The admission may on balance be even favorable to the party-opponent but that would not be a basis for its exclusion.9
To illustrate, in a suit for collection of a loan, the defendant’s statement that he had paid his debt to the plaintiff is not against the defendant’s interest but is in fact favorable to him. The plaintiff may however introduce it in evidence for the purpose of proving that there was indeed a loan contract between him and the defendant.
The use of the term “admission against interest” and the perception that an admission must be against interest is quite widespread.10 This is somewhat disconcerting. Avoidance of the term “admission against interest” is more than a matter of semantics. A trial court exposed to the use of the term may exclude evidence of an adverse party’s statement if the proponent does not show that the statement was against the adverse party’s interest. The use of “admission against interest” must be consigned to the dustbin of legal history.
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- 2 FLORENZ D. REGALADO, REMEDIAL LAW COMPENDIUM 619 (9th rev. ed., 3rd printing, 2001). ↩︎
- Id.. ↩︎
- Christopher Blair, Admissions (Don’t Have to be) against Interest, 40 Tulsa L. Rev 751, 754 (2005) ↩︎
- MUELLER, KIRKPATRICK, & RICHTER, EVIDENCE 837 (6th ed.). ↩︎
- United States v. Cardena, 842 F.3d 959, 992 (7th Cir. 2016). ↩︎
- ARTHUR BEST, EVIDENCE 94 (12th ed.). ↩︎
- Admissions need not satisfy any trustworthiness criteria (Jones v. National American University, 608 F.3d 1039, 1045 [8th Cir. 2010]). ↩︎
- ANTONIO R. BAUTISTA, BASIC EVIDENCE 185, 223 (2004 ed.); Edmund M. Morgan, Admissions as an Exception to the Hearsay Rule, 30 Yale L.J 355 (1921). The view that admissions should be disserving at the time they are offered in evidence seems to have arisen from the then theory that admissions were offered and received solely to contradict the position taken by the admitter. But as pointed out by other authorities, an admission is more often offered and received as substantive evidence, i.e., to prove the truth of the fact asserted therein. (Christopher Blair, Admissions [Don’t Have to be] against Interest, 40 Tulsa L. Rev 751, 756 [2005]). ↩︎
- MUELLER, KIRKPATRICK, & RICHTER, EVIDENCE 837-838 (6th rev. ed.). ↩︎
- Almost all local authors on evidence state that an admission must be against interest. An exception is Professor Bautista; he did, however, write that an admission must be “disserving” at the time it is offered in evidence (ANTONIO R. BAUTISTA, BASIC EVIDENCE 186-187 (2004 ed.). ↩︎
