By Anthony Jacoba, Partner, Ocampo & Suralvo Law Offices
Published in Asia Business Law Journal, November/December 2025 issue (posted online February 2026).
The 2019 amendments to the Revised Rules on Evidence introduced a rule that a duplicate is admissible to the same extent as the original, unless there is a genuine question about the original’s authenticity or admitting the duplicate would be unjust. The amendments took effect on 1 May 2020, but the Supreme Court continued to apply the older approach in at least one later case.
In People v Lastimosa (3 February 2025), the Court applied the duplicate rule for the first time, admitting a photocopy of a death certificate as a duplicate. It also applied the rule retroactively to evidence presented in 2014, treating it as a procedural rule that defeated no substantive right.
The author sees the ruling as a move away from the strict “best evidence rule” toward deciding cases on their merits, especially given the broader definition of documentary evidence that now covers recordings, photographs and videos. He identifies open questions, such as whether the rule extends to public documents, to records moved between cloud storage services, and to copies of copies.
This article was first published in Asia Business Law Journal, November/December 2025 issue (posted online February 2026).