Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 11
1 benefit section 2? If you do get hold of a current or an
2 old White Book, it appears at paragraph 6081 in volume 2 of
3 the White Book. Could they borrow that one behind you?
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It may still be 6081 in the 1993.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I do this with some sense of, what I
8 shall say, reluctance because your Lordship will remember
9 at the outset of the case we offered the Defendants White
10 Books, Gattleys and Duncan and Neils -----
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Happily, things have settled down a bit since
13 those days.
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: I sincerely hope so because it is quite annoying.
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17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: In any event, it is 6081, Mr. Morris.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: It is the paragraph?
20
21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is towards the back. You go from numbers,
22 dash numbers, to simple paragraph numbers.
23
24 MR. MORRIS: We have the page number as 1836.
25
26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is it, yes. 2.1: "In any civil
27 proceedings a statement made, whether orally or in a
28 document or otherwise, by any person, whether called as a
29 witness in those proceedings or not, shall, subject to this
30 section and to rules of court", and we have looked at some
31 of those, "be admissible as evidence of any fact stated
32 therein of which direct oral evidence by him would be
33 admissible." So, it is not the document there, it is the
34 statement made in the document. Then you were going to
35 section 4, Mr. Rampton?
36
37 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. The only difference within section
38 4 is this: It too renders admissible the statement, not
39 the document, exactly the same way as section 2 does, but
40 it has this difference, that if the statement has been made
41 by somebody who is acting under a duty, then multiple
42 hearsay is allowed, if I may paraphrase.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So in certain circumstances information
45 collated by a person ---
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: Exactly.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- and, for all I know, that might relate to
50 someone who makes a PHLS report, we might have argument on
51 it but it might be -----
52
53 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord. There is some authority about what
54 acting under a duty means. It is, perhaps encouragingly,
55 quite wide. It extends to employees, it certainly would
56 extend to an Environmental Health Officer or somebody
57 directed to make an enquiry. Of course, the number of
58 hands of hearsay through which this statement is passed may
59 affect its weight, its credibility, but it does not under
60 section 4 make it inadmissible.
