Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 09


     
     1        answers to interrogatories have a slightly greater status
     2        than mere admissions against interest made out of court,
     3        for this reason:  they are part of the procedure of the
     4        court whose whole underlying basis is to avoid the need to
     5        call evidence at trial; that is the whole purpose, to save
     6        time and costs.
     7
     8   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I think would be pointless now is
     9        getting out various answers to the interrogatories and
    10        poring over them to see what might be in and what might
    11        not.  The only matter I have in mind at the moment is
    12        this -- and it is a question upon which Ms. Steel was asked
    13        anyway -- there was the interrogatory where the wrong
    14        street number was put in the interrogatory, and she
    15        answered to the effect that she was not there on a certain
    16        day, when I think it appears she was, and there was the
    17        argument whether that was misleading or not.  What I make
    18        of it, I am not going to give any indication of at the
    19        moment.  But that is there as a matter of fact that
    20        Ms. Steel made that answer, just as much as if it had been
    21        made in a pleading or in an answer to a letter; a statement
    22        made on behalf of one party is made by their solicitor, one
    23        would infer, with their knowledge and authority, and unless
    24        there evidence to the contrary, and that has been proved to
    25        be untrue.
    26
    27   MR. RAMPTON:  That is right.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Or a fact is pleaded in a defence or a
    30        Statement of Claim and that is proved to be untrue.  The
    31        judge can ask himself -- if I think that statement was
    32        true, whether in an interrogatory or in a pleading or in a
    33        solicitors' letter -- I can ask myself: where does that
    34        take me?  It is a different situation at the moment, I am
    35        minded to think, where it is in a witness statement served,
    36        because of the provision of Order 38, rule 2A(11).
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON:  Mr. Atkinson is beavering away at the moment.
    39        I will not say anything more about that.  He is saying that
    40        maybe Rule (11) is not the one that matters, but perhaps
    41        I can come back to that next week.
    42
    43   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Perhaps you could.  If that were so, I could
    44        see that there was good reason for that, because it is in
    45        everyone's interests that people feel uninhibited about
    46        exchanging witness statements without having to look over
    47        their shoulder:  "What is going to happen next if I do?"
    48        But there we are.
    49
    50   MS. STEEL:  Can I just ask -- which I was trying to do some time 
    51        ago -- you said at page 7, line 53: "But the fact that that 
    52        was the answer given to an interrogatory is always going to 
    53        be", and it just says -----
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  In the forum.  I mean that it is in the body
    56        of information I have before me in this case -- the forum
    57        being the court, as it were.
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:   Right, OK.
    60

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