Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 10


     
     1        journalist's own gloss in the text, does not thereby become
     2        admissible and ought to be excluded.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You see, that may be an important example
     5        because if the Defendants had a particular press report in
     6        relation to what someone is said in the report to have said
     7        in America, being an American, or in Germany being a
     8        German, they could serve a Civil Evidence Act Notice.  The
     9        press report itself would not become admissible in
    10        evidence.  But, on the assumption that Mr. Jones lives in
    11        Oregon or Maryland and even if he is still alive, then what
    12        he is said to have said in the newspaper report could
    13        become admissible in evidence.
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What weight one attaches to it, of course, is
    18        another matter, because if get over the first hurdle of it
    19        being admissible, what you do not do is make a laboratory
    20        report admissible in itself.  What you do do, if all the
    21        Civil Evidence Act Notice and Order 38 provisions are
    22        complied with, you eventually make the statements made by
    23        people in the report admissible in evidence.  That is the
    24        full extent of it.  I have understood it correctly?
    25
    26   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, there is a qualification of that which
    27        I ought to remind your Lordship of in just a moment.  But
    28        may I just follow up what your Lordship says -- in a way it
    29        reflects what I said a moment ago about the press cutting
    30         -- just because certain statements in a report, whether it
    31        be of whatever kind, a laboratory report or anything else,
    32        are admissible because they fall within section 2 of the
    33        Act does not mean that large portions of the report can be
    34        read out unless the Notice is apt to cover those statements
    35        as well.
    36
    37        That the Defendants understand this is, in my submission,
    38        tolerably clear from the selective way in which they have
    39        put a Civil Evidence Act Notice on Mr. Clark's statement.
    40        They understand very well that it is only certain parts of
    41        the document that may become admissible, and that it is
    42        possible to say:  "Well, I want that bit and that bit but
    43        not those bits".
    44
    45   MR. MORRIS:  That is not strictly true.  I mean, the purpose of
    46        that is to identify the parts that we wish to rely on as
    47        evidence, not just the parts which may or may not be
    48        admissible, but the parts which we wish to rely on.  Those
    49        are the parts we wish to rely on, even though much of the
    50        rest would be admissible. 
    51 
    52   MR. RAMPTON:  I do not alter what I have just said in any way. 
    53        My Lord, I am entirely in agreement with your Lordship so
    54        far as section 2 witnesses or documents are concerned.  One
    55        can easily use, if it happens to be available, a witness to
    56        report what has been said as one can a document.  My
    57        Lord, section 4 is slightly different in that unlike the
    58        section 2 -----
    59
    60   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Could I just read out for the Defendants'

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