Short answer. Possibly, yes. Rule 130, Section 3 generally requires the original document itself, but allows exceptions — including when the original is lost or destroyed, or cannot be produced, without bad faith on the offeror's part. Other exceptions cover documents in an adverse party's control, voluminous records, public records, and documents not closely related to a controlling issue.
What the law says
When the subject of inquiry is the contents of a document, writing, recording, photograph or other record, no evidence is admissible other than the original document itself, except in the following cases: (a) When the original is lost or destroyed, or cannot be produced in court, without bad faith on the part of the offeror
Rule 130, Section 3 — Original document must be produced; exceptions. Read the full provision →
The default rule: produce the original
Section 3 states the baseline plainly: when the subject of inquiry is the contents of a document, writing, recording, photograph, or other record, no evidence is admissible other than the original itself. This is the Original Document Rule — it favors the actual document over a copy or a description of it. Requiring the original guards against alterations, mistranscription, or selective quotation that a copy or a description of the document's contents might otherwise obscure. That preference for the original is not a mere formality; it reflects a judgment that documentary evidence is only as reliable as the process used to reproduce it, and a copy always carries some risk of departing from what the original actually says.
The loss-or-destruction exception
The first listed exception covers exactly your situation: when the original is lost or destroyed, or simply cannot be produced in court, without bad faith on the part of the person offering the evidence. If the loss was not engineered in bad faith to avoid producing the real document, secondary evidence can substitute. The bad-faith qualifier matters here: a party who deliberately destroys or hides the original to avoid producing it cannot then rely on this exception to introduce a self-serving copy.
Other recognized exceptions
Section 3 lists further situations where secondary evidence is allowed: when the original is in the custody or control of the adverse party who fails to produce it after notice, or cannot be obtained by local judicial process; when the original consists of numerous accounts too voluminous to examine in court; when it is a public record; and when the original is not closely related to a controlling issue. Each of these additional exceptions responds to a different practical problem — an uncooperative adverse party, a records set too large to usefully examine, the special reliability already attached to public records, or a document whose contents are simply beside the point being proven.