Alabama § 12-21-42 Books of Account as Proof of Accounts

Alabama Statutes

§ 12-21-42 — Books of Account as Proof of Accounts

Alabama § 12-21-42

JurisdictionAlabama

Title 12Courts

Ch. 21Evidence and Witnesses

Art. 1General Provisions

Div. 1Evidence

This text of Alabama § 12-21-42 (Books of Account as Proof of Accounts) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

Ala. Code § 12-21-42 (2026).

Text

The books of account of any manufacturer, merchant, shopkeeper, physician or other person doing a regular business and keeping daily entries thereof may be admitted in evidence as proof of such accounts upon the following conditions:

(1)That he kept no clerk, or else the clerk is dead or otherwise inaccessible or for any other reason the clerk is disqualified from testifying;

(2)Upon proof, the party’s oath being sufficient, that the book tendered is his book of original entries;

(3)When any party or interested person, manager or other official of any association or company testifies to his or their account book and the items therein contained, that the same is a book of original entries and that the entries therein are true and just and were made by himself or his employee, deceased or

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The books of account of any manufacturer, merchant, shopkeeper, physician or other person doing a regular business and keeping daily entries thereof may be admitted in evidence as proof of such accounts upon the following conditions:
(1) That he kept no clerk, or else the clerk is dead or otherwise inaccessible or for any other reason the clerk is disqualified from testifying;
(2) Upon proof, the party’s oath being sufficient, that the book tendered is his book of original entries;
(3) When any party or interested person, manager or other official of any association or company testifies to his or their account book and the items therein contained, that the same is a book of original entries and that the entries therein are true and just and were made by himself or his employee, deceased or living, in the usual course of trade and of his duty or employment to the party so testifying; thereupon the said account book and entries shall be admitted as prima facie evidence in the case upon the matters as shown by said account book;
(4) When, in any mercantile business, sales are regularly entered on charge tickets by the salesman making such sales, whence they are regularly transcribed to a day book or ledger as the first permanent memorial thereof, the testimony of the clerk or bookkeeper, who has transcribed such entries, that they were correctly transcribed by him, in due course of business, from the original tickets which came to him in due course from said salesman, shall render such entries in a day book or ledger prima facie evidence of the sale and delivery of such articles to the person charged therewith; and
(5) In case of the loss or destruction of the book of original entries, a ledger upon which such entries have been transcribed in due course of business shall be admissible as secondary evidence of the entries in the original book, upon the testimony of the clerk or bookkeeper making the same that they were correctly transcribed.