If you’ve practiced law for more than five minutes, you’ve received a responsive pleading or set of discovery responses telling you that x or y document “speaks for itself.” This claim usually answers a question or allegation about that document, intended in good faith to clarify a party’s position. For example, a complaint might allege that Exhibit A is an accurate copy of the parties’ contract, or that Exhibit B gives the plaintiff this or that right. But instead of engaging the substance, the answer will just say that the document speaks for itself.
Not helpful!
Of course the document doesn’t speak for itself; it’s a mute sheet of paper, which is part of the problem. Even if we indulge the metaphor, we’re obviously trying to find out what it has to say.
So it cheered me up to see a panel of the Court of Appeals dig its teeth into a claim that “the document speaks for itself.” In Lorenz v. Parker, Clayton Givens died intestate and Rachel Parker filed suit to establish that she was his daughter. To that end, she sent a request for admission to the defendants, asking them to ““[a]dmit that the document attached hereto as Exhibit A is a true, authentic, accurate, and admissible copy of the DNA Test Report evidencing that Clayton Paul Givens is the biological father of Rachel Wetzel Parker.” The defendants responded that “the document speaks for itself.”
Not helpful!
At a bench trial, Parker tried to introduce this statement into evidence as authentication of the DNA test report, on the theory that it admitted the accuracy and authenticity of the report. The defendants argued that their response was “nonresponsive.”
Big problem here: Failing to respond to a RFA is the same as admitting it. And so the trial court deemed the request admitted. it found that the response authenticated the DNA report and admitted it into evidence.
The defendants appealed, arguing that at most, their response established the DNA’s report’s genuineness. The trouble, as the CAV pointed out, is that this was enough to authenticate the document, and the defendants did not point to another rule of evidence rendering it inadmissible. The defendants claimed that the report lacked a sufficient foundation, but did not say what else might be necessary to get it into evidence. “While [their] brief insinuates in some places that the court erred by not requiring expert testimony before the report could be admitted into evidence, [they] did not assign error to the court’s conclusion that the test was relevant and reliable enough to be admitted.” Once the report was admitted into evidence, it was up to the trial judge as fact-finder to determine its weight.
Moral of the story: Just answer the RFAs.