When someone makes an innocent statement without realizing the consequences of what he is saying, people tend to accept his word as fact. Halachah, too, accepts such statements as fact in certain specific instances. (These are: as testimony regarding a man’s death in order that his wife be permitted to remarry; in determining the status of food that had been suspected of being non-kosher by rabbinic law; or where the facts will eventually come to light in any case.) Rechilus, however, cannot be accepted as fact even when a statement was made off-handedly.
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