Robinson v. Branch Brook Manor Apts

In Robinson v. Branch Brook Manor Apts., 101 N.J.Super. 117, 121-22, 243 A.2d 284 (App.Div.1968), the court upheld the admission, in a civil rights case against the landlord, of a telephone call from a landlord's agent to a white prospective tenant informing her of the availability of certain apartments that were not made available to a minority applicant. The telephone call was deemed competent proof, even though the recipient of the call did not know the landlord's agent personally and thus could not identify him positively, based on extrinsic proof that preceded and followed the call. As Robinson noted, "although traditionally authentication of a telephone conversation required the caller's identification of himself as X and the witness's affirmation that he was able to recognize the voice as that of X, the preferred rule now is that reliable circumstantial evidence of the identity of the caller as X will suffice." Id. at 121, 243 A.2d 284.