§ 1331 [Statements in Writings Acted Upon as True]

Old documents can be used as evidence in court, even if they contain secondhand information (hearsay). The document must be more than 30 years old, and people who had a reason to care about the information must have treated it as true over time.

For example, if an old deed, letter, or record from decades ago described who owned a piece of land, and people bought and sold that land based on that information, a court could allow that document as evidence. The key is that real people with something at stake relied on it as fact.

This rule exists because very old documents are hard to challenge with live witnesses, and long-term reliance on a document is a good sign that it was accurate. Courts treat that history of trust as a reasonable substitute for other ways of proving something is true.