Day 279 - 12 Jul 96 - Page 13
1 evidence or calling Miss Clauphine Carston to give oral
2 evidence of what they said. It is what is often called a
3 rule against double hearsay, because a written statement by
4 someone is hearsay, in fact, although that is not the way
5 we have referred to hearsay in the trial so far, and if the
6 written statement being hearsay refers to what someone else
7 has said to the maker of the statement that is also
8 hearsay, therefore it is called double hearsay sometimes
9 just for ease of reference.
10
11 What I do not see at the moment is the article
12 itself. You see, I have not heard Mr. Rampton on this, but
13 it appears to me the article itself is, at the very best, a
14 written statement by Miss Clauphine Carston of what has
15 been said to her; in other words, it would appear at very
16 best to be in no different position to the letter she wrote
17 to Miss Steel. So, you cannot be in any better position,
18 it occurs to me, without having heard what you want to say
19 or even Mr. Rampton on this count, you cannot be in any
20 better position with the article than you can with her
21 letter which she wrote to you which you would like to put
22 in under the Civil Evidence Act.
23
24 That is just an attempt to help you get your mind
25 round what I see as a problem. I have to say that as a
26 lawyer one has to read these sections often more than once
27 and very carefully to have any confidence that you have got
28 them straight in your mind.
29
30 MR. MORRIS: The situation looks like -- well, not likes like
31 but could be said that it is bizarre that if she had read a
32 document--
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, that is not too bizarre because you do
35 not have to have her telling, saying, what is in the
36 document, the document itself may be sufficient, and then
37 you have all sorts of provisions like that as to whether
38 documents are records, and that is something we will no
39 doubt look at when you are considering Mrs Brinley-Codd's
40 list of documents, and you ought to look at section 4 of
41 the Act, which is a bit further on. But let us not get
42 derouted on to that.
43
44 MS. STEEL: To be honest, I do not actually understand this,
45 because it is about Civil Evidence Act statements.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
48
49 MS. STEEL: And so if you are only allowed to prove a Civil
50 Evidence Act statement by direct oral evidence there would
51 be no point in having Civil Evidence Act statements.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, there is sometimes. The rules say
54 normally it can only be adduced at the end of the
55 evidence. It is not very popular nowadays, but I remember
56 seeing after 1968 it was very popular, for instance in road
57 traffic accidents, to call a person to give evidence and
58 then you would ask them at the end of the day "Is this the
59 statement you made soon after the accident?" and their
60 statement, the written statement which they had made soon
