When the Records Disagree: Conflicting Collateral Evidence, Evidentiary Lens Balancing, and Abstention Failure in Multi-Witness Contract Audits

Once every condition to effectiveness has an attached verification record (CIV-38), what should a multi-witness gate do when two attached collateral records of the same event disagree, and can a balanced two and two assignment of precautionary and presumptive evidentiary lenses make a 3-of-4 quorum abstain when the contract does not resolve the conflict?

Pairs an exact enumeration of 112 conflicting-evidence states (E39-A) with 96 live witness evaluations across 12 authored contract packets, 2 evidentiary lenses, and 4 witnesses: Witness A (Max reasoning), Witness B, Witness C, and Witness D (E39-B), plus a 24-exhibit track of real executed amendments, consents, and merger agreements filed on SEC EDGAR (E39-C). When two attached collateral records disagree, single-record and single-lens gates release 20 to 24 of 112 states unsafely; ordered CEV-39 resolution (designated record, then required computation, then agreement, else UNDETERMINED with verdict invariance) releases none unsafely and holds only the 4 required states. Live, witnesses were correct on 48/48 evaluations of conflicts the contract resolves, under both lenses, but returned HOLD on 0/96 evaluations, including 0/16 on the two outcome relevant unresolved packets, where they followed the assigned lens. A balanced two and two lens panel held the clean unresolved packet K08 in 6/6 balanced assignments and released it in 10/10 unbalanced ones. The CEV-39 gate made 0/12 unsafe releases. On real filed exhibits, 31/33 completed evaluations matched the structural effectiveness label. Twelve authored packets and 33 real-text evaluations bound the empirical claim; no production system changed.

• F39.1 (deterministic, E39-A): across 112 states (108 determinate, 4 hold-required, 56 with conflicting records), first-record, single-lens, and unnormalized-computation gates (G0-G3) release 24/112 states unsafely (21.43%) and the designated-record-only gate (G4) 20/112 (17.86%). Strict CEV-39 (G5) makes 0 unsafe releases with 4 false holds (3.70%); CEV-39 with verdict invariance (G6) makes 0 unsafe releases and 0 false holds by construction, a specification check rather than performance evidence.
• F39.2 (deterministic, E39-A): under a 3-of-4 quorum only a 2-2 lens split changes the outcome. For rule-following witnesses it holds exactly the 4 outcome relevant unresolved states; for lens-only witnesses it still releases 8 unsafe states where the records agree with each other but not with the computation the contract requires.
• F39.3 (live, E39-B): all four witnesses returned the correct verdict on 48/48 evaluations of designated-record and required-computation conflicts under both lenses, and on 8/8 evaluations of the invariant unresolved packet K09. Quotes were verified verbatim in the packet in 96/96 evaluations and inside the cited instrument in 85/96.
• F39.4 (live, E39-B): witnesses returned HOLD on 0/96 evaluations, including 0/16 on the outcome relevant unresolved packets K07 and K08. On K08, every presumptive run returned PASS and every precautionary run returned FAIL, while all 8 runs flagged the conflict. Lens dependence occurred only on K07 (3/4 witnesses) and K08 (4/4), and on 0/40 other witness and packet pairs.
• F39.5 (live, E39-B): across all 16 possible lens assignments, K08 was held in 6/6 balanced two and two assignments and released in 10/10 unbalanced ones. The Round 38 lens panel (A3) released K08 by 3-1; the CEV-39 gate (A8) released 10/12 correctly with 0/12 unsafe releases and 2/12 holds.
• F39.6 (live, E39-C): on 24 real executed exhibits from SEC EDGAR, Witness C matched the structural effectiveness label on 22/24 and Witness B on 9/9 completed; the two witnesses agreed on 8/9 paired exhibits. One mismatch traces to an audit window cut after the effectiveness clause.
• F39.7 (authoring audit): witness rationales identified a defect in packet K07, whose base agreement makes the invoice premature regardless of the conflict. The pre-registered label is kept and K07 excluded results are reported alongside.

• E39-A Conflicting collateral evidence state-space diagnostic and lens composition analysis Executed (diagnostic)
• E39-B Live 4-witness conflicting-evidence benchmark under two evidentiary lenses Executed (diagnostic)
• E39-C Real SEC EDGAR exhibit track: conditional versus unconditional effectiveness Executed (bounded diagnostic)

• H39.1 Single-record and single-lens gates release unsafely on conflicting-evidence states, while ordered CEV-39 resolution with verdict invariance eliminates unsafe releases without false holds.
• H39.2 Under a 3-of-4 quorum only a 2-2 lens split changes outcomes, and it holds exactly the outcome relevant unresolved states only for witnesses that apply contract evidence rules first.
• H39.3 Witnesses apply a designated record and a contract-required computation regardless of assigned lens.
• H39.4 Witnesses return HOLD when records of equal standing conflict, the contract is silent, and the outcome depends on the conflict.
• H39.5 A balanced two and two lens assignment holds the clean unresolved packet while every unbalanced assignment releases it.
• H39.6 The CEV-39 gate makes no unsafe release on the authored suite.
• H39.7 On real filed exhibits, witnesses distinguish conditional from unconditional effectiveness from the exhibit text.

Research diagnostic, live multi-model benchmark, and real-text exhibit track only. No production system, release gate, or Noetis behavior changed.

• With a neutral instruction that offers HOLD and no evidentiary lens, and with expected verdicts audited outside the authoring process, do witnesses abstain on outcome relevant unresolved conflicts, and can a four-witness quorum on real SEC exhibits tie each conditioned amendment to the filer's later statement that it became effective?

Builds on Round 38, Round 37, Round 36, Round 35. Continued in Round 40.