Rule 1321 Evidence of reputation in a community is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule if the reputation concerns the interest of the public in property i…

If people in a community have a shared belief about who has rights to a certain piece of property, that general reputation can be used as evidence in court. Normally, statements about what people say or believe are blocked by the hearsay rule, but this is an exception.

There is one condition: the reputation must have existed before any legal dispute over the property started. If the community's shared understanding developed only after a conflict arose, it cannot be used under this rule.