Business and personal correspondence with headers, threads, and attachments — each piece its own evidence question.
What this type commonly supports
- Agreements and their terms
- Notice and knowledge
- Who communicated with whom, and when
How the gates bear on it
Authentication
Addresses, signatures, headers, and reply chains supply the finding-support evidence.
“evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims”
Hearsay
An opposing party's email is an admissions candidate; forwarded content nests a second layer.
“A statement by the party’s agent or servant concerning a matter within the scope of the agency or employment thereof, made during the existence of the relationship”
Original contents
Printouts and PDFs are duplicate questions; completeness of the thread matters under the unfairness clause.
“It is unfair, under the circumstance, to admit the duplicate in lieu of the original.”
The governing units, loaded whole
- § 90.901, Fla. Stat. — authentication
- § 90.803, Fla. Stat. — the exceptions
- § 668.50, Fla. Stat. — electronic records and signatures
The recurring failure modes
- Printing one message out of a thread
- No custodian or participant to speak to the account
- Overlooking the agent-statement scope limit for employee emails
Software, not a law firm. This page teaches how Florida's evidence gates generally bear on this type — legal information, not legal advice, and never a prediction about your evidence. Whether a particular item clears the gates in your case is judgment work: an independent Florida attorney can review it and bill you directly. The five-gate frame lives on the Evidence Command Center.