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Defining Materiality

G. Alexander Nunn, Defining Materiality in Nunn on Evidence (2025), available at https://nunn.law/defining-materiality. | View history

The admissibility of evidence fundamentally requires relevance. Relevance, in its broadest sense, is the tendency of evidence to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence. However, this is only one side of the coin. The other, equally crucial, aspect of relevance is materiality. Materiality, in essence, demands that the fact the evidence seeks to prove or disprove must actually matter to the case at hand. It must be a “fact of consequence” to the determination of the action. Without this connection to a legally significant issue, even the most convincing piece of evidence is ultimately irrelevant.

Key Overview

At its heart, materiality acts as a gatekeeper, ensuring that the evidence presented in court is tethered to the actual legal and factual questions the court is being asked to resolve. Think of it this way: a trial is a structured inquiry, not an open-ended exploration of every fact that might surround a particular event. Materiality provides the boundaries for that inquiry. It dictates that the factual propositions a party seeks to establish with evidence must be pertinent to the claims, charges, or defenses being litigated.

The primary compass for determining what is material in a given case is the substantive law that governs the dispute. This means looking to the statutes, case law, or common law principles that define the elements of a particular civil claim (like negligence or breach of contract), a criminal charge (such as robbery or arson), or an affirmative defense (for example, self-defense or statute of limitations). Each of these legal constructs is built upon a foundation of essential elements, and any fact that is essential to proving or disproving one of these elements is, by definition, a material fact. For instance, in a murder prosecution, the identity of the perpetrator is undeniably a material fact, as it is a core element the prosecution must prove. Similarly, in a breach of contract action, the existence of a valid contractual agreement is a material fact.

Beyond the general substantive law, the specific pleadings in a case—the complaint, the answer, the indictment, and any subsequent formal filings—play a critical role in narrowing the field of material facts. These documents outline what the parties are actually alleging and denying. If a defendant, in their answer, admits to a particular factual allegation made by the plaintiff, that fact, for the most part, ceases to be “in dispute”. Consequently, evidence offered solely to prove that admitted fact would generally be considered immaterial because it no longer addresses a “fact of consequence” to the contested issues of the case. The pleadings, therefore, refine the broad landscape of potentially material facts defined by substantive law down to the specific facts that remain contested between the parties.

Distinguishing Materiality from Probativeness

It is of paramount importance to grasp the distinction between materiality and its sibling concept, probativeness. While both are integral components of the broader notion of relevance, they address distinct inquiries. Materiality concerns the relationship between the fact the evidence is offered to prove and the legal issues in the case. It asks the question: “Is this fact genuinely at issue and of consequence to the outcome of this litigation?”

Probativeness, on the other hand, looks at the logical relationship between the item of evidence itself and the factual proposition it is offered to prove. The question here is: “Does this piece of evidence have any tendency, however slight, to make the existence of this particular fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence?” Evidence is probative if it has any logical tendency to affect the likelihood of a fact.

The critical point is that evidence can be highly probative of a fact that is, itself, not material to the case. Imagine, for example, a prosecution for assault. Evidence that the defendant owns a collection of rare stamps might be quite probative of the fact that the defendant is a stamp collector. However, unless the defendant’s status as a stamp collector has some bearing on an element of the assault charge or a defense to it (a highly unlikely scenario), that fact is immaterial. Therefore, the evidence of stamp ownership, despite being probative of stamp collecting, would be inadmissible due to its lack of materiality to the assault charge. The evidence, no matter how convincingly it proves the defendant collects stamps, does not advance the inquiry into whether the defendant committed the assault. This illustrates that materiality acts as a filter: the fact to be proven must first be material before the probativeness of the evidence towards that fact even comes into consideration.

The Cornerstone: Relation to an Issue Properly in Dispute

The doctrinal concept of materiality is fundamentally about ensuring that the trial process remains focused on resolving the genuine disagreements between the parties that are legally significant. Evidence is material only if it relates to an issue that is “properly in dispute”. An issue is properly in dispute if it is a necessary component of a claim or defense and has not been conceded or removed from contention by the parties.

This means that even if a piece of evidence is incredibly convincing about a certain point, if that point isn’t actually contested or doesn’t matter to the legal outcome, the evidence is immaterial. For example, if in a personal injury lawsuit arising from a car accident, the defendant formally admits in their pleadings that they were indeed the driver of the vehicle involved, then evidence offered by the plaintiff solely to prove that the defendant was the driver—perhaps a photograph of the defendant exiting the car—would generally be deemed immaterial. While the photograph might be highly probative of the fact that the defendant was the driver, that fact is no longer a “fact of consequence” because it is not in dispute. The admission has removed it from the field of contested issues.

The determination of whether a fact is material, and therefore whether evidence relating to it is potentially admissible, is a question of law to be decided by the judge. It is an assessment that occurs before considering the weight or persuasiveness of the evidence. The judge examines the applicable substantive law and the state of the pleadings to ascertain which facts are truly of consequence to the resolution of the case. Only then can the court properly assess whether a proffered item of evidence has a legitimate role to play in the trial.

This discussion is narrowly focused on this foundational concept of materiality as it relates to an issue properly in dispute. A detailed examination of how stipulations between parties might affect materiality, as well as the nuanced balancing of relevant evidence against potential prejudice or confusion, is deferred to Section 2.3.5 of this treatise. Furthermore, the precise manner in which materiality is incorporated into specific evidentiary rules, such as Federal Rule of Evidence 401, and an exploration of extensive case law illustrating these principles, will be covered in Volumes II and III, respectively. Materiality links the evidence to the legally contested issues of the case, ensuring that the judicial process remains efficient and focused on resolving genuine disputes of consequence.

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