B

Bailiff: An armed guard who provides security for an individual courtroom.

Bulk filer: An individual or corporation that files a sufficiently large number of lawsuits in the courts to get a special rate. These people have all of their cases appear before the same judge on the same day, enabling them to process a large number of cases at a minimal cost in dollars or attorney time. Much of our approach to debt defense seeks to neutralize the bulk filer’s advantage of being able to work on multiple cases at one time.

Business records exception (to the rule against hearsay): In plain English, this rule provides that if a party can prove that records fulfill certain requirements, they can be used as evidence. Normally, because documents are made outside of the court, they are considered “hearsay” and, and the courts should not consider them.  But there are several exceptions.

The most important exception to the rule against hearsay in debt cases is the business records exception, and it’s fair to say that most debt defense cases will be decided based upon this rule.

Every state has its own business records exception, and you should look up your state’s rule (Google your state’s name and the words “business records exception” and you will find many cases which spell out what the rule is for you. It will require something like the following: that the records are (1) usually created close to the time the event they record occurred, and (2) are normally kept in a particular way, and (3) that a document they wish to produce in evidence is one of these documents that is normally kept, and (4) in this instance was kept in the usual way (5) for business purposes (rather than litigation purposes). If all these requirements are established by admissible evidence, then the documents can be used as evidence even though they are hearsay.

Every single word of the definition matters and must be fulfilled before the document can be used as evidence.