§ 1272 [Absence of Business Record as Evidence]

This rule lets someone use missing business records as proof that something never happened. Normally, courts don't allow secondhand statements like written records into evidence unless there's a special exception. This rule creates one of those exceptions, but for the opposite situation: it applies when there's no record at all, and that lack of a record is being used to argue that an event, action, or condition never occurred.

For this to work, two things have to be true. First, the business must have a regular habit of recording these kinds of events every time they happen, close to when they happen, and keeping those records. Second, the way the business collects information and creates its records must be reliable enough that a missing entry actually means something. In other words, the business's normal record keeping has to be careful and consistent enough that if the event had happened, there would almost certainly be a record of it.

In practical terms, this rule helps someone show that an event didn't happen by pointing to a gap in records that are normally kept accurately. For example, if a company always logs every repair made to a machine, and there's no log entry for a specific date, that missing entry can be used as evidence that no repair happened that day. But this only works if the business proves it keeps those records reliably and consistently in the first place.