--- title: "Johnson v. Lutz" type: Landmark Case source: https://casebriefly.com/landmark-cases/johnson-v-lutz --- # Johnson v. Lutz Johnson v. Lutz is a seminal case establishing that business records are inadmissible hearsay when they incorporate information from persons who are not part of the business and have no business duty to report. The decision clarified that the reliability rationale for the business records exception requires that every link in the chain of information come from someone within the business organization acting under a business duty. ## Citation 253 N.Y. 124, 170 N.E. 517 (1930) ## Year 1930 ## Court New York Court of Appeals ## Facts An automobile struck and killed a pedestrian at an intersection in New York City. In the ensuing wrongful death action, the plaintiff sought to introduce a police officer's accident report to establish how the accident occurred. The report contained the officer's own observations, but it also included statements from bystander witnesses who had observed the accident. The officer recorded the bystanders' accounts in his official report. ## Procedural History The trial court admitted the police report as a business record. The appellate division reversed, and the New York Court of Appeals affirmed the reversal. ## Issue Whether a police accident report that incorporates statements from bystander witnesses who have no business duty to report accurately is admissible as a business record. ## Holding The court held that the police report was not admissible as a business record to the extent it contained information supplied by bystander witnesses. The business records exception requires that the information in the record come from persons acting within the regular course of the business. Because the bystanders had no duty to report and were not part of the police department's business organization, their statements lacked the reliability that justifies the exception. ## Reasoning The court reasoned that the business records exception is justified by the reliability that flows from systematic record-keeping by persons with a duty to be accurate. When a record incorporates information from outsiders who have no business duty to observe or report, that link in the chain of information lacks the guarantee of accuracy. The police officer may have had a duty to record what he was told, but the bystanders who provided the information had no duty to be accurate. Therefore, the portions of the report based on bystander statements did not qualify as business records. ## Impact Johnson v. Lutz established the principle later codified in the federal rules that the business records exception requires each person in the chain of information to have been acting in the regular course of business. This principle is reflected in FRE 803(6)'s requirement that the record be made 'from information transmitted by' a person with knowledge acting in the regular course of business. The case remains widely cited for the proposition that third-party information in business records is hearsay within hearsay requiring an independent exception. ## Key Quotes - The purpose of the statute is to make prima facie evidence of the entries in books and records made in the regular course of business. It was never intended to be used as a means of getting before the jury evidence which would otherwise be inadmissible. - The record must be made by persons within the business who had a duty to report. ## Related Cases - palmer-v-hoffman - beech-aircraft-v-rainey - bourjaily-v-united-states - united-states-v-zenni ## Exam Relevance Johnson v. Lutz is a classic exam question setup. Professors present a business record that contains information from both insiders and outsiders and ask students to analyze the admissibility of each component. The key is identifying whether every person in the information chain had a business duty to report. Students often see this in the form of police reports, hospital records containing patient histories, and corporate memoranda incorporating outside information. ## Study Tips - Master the business duty requirement: every person in the chain of information must be acting in the course of the business. - Understand the double hearsay problem: the record itself may be a business record, but information from outsiders within the record is hearsay within hearsay. - Know how to solve the outsider-information problem: find an independent hearsay exception for the outsider's statement (e.g., excited utterance, admission). - Compare with hospital records: a patient's statement of symptoms may be admissible under 803(4) even though the patient is not part of the hospital's business. ## Doctrine Established Business Duty Requirement for Business Records Exception --- Source: [Johnson v. Lutz — CaseBriefly](https://casebriefly.com/landmark-cases/johnson-v-lutz)