Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 15
1
2 MR. MORRIS: Where are we now?
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: Tab 4, a case called William Petch and Mary his
5 Wife v. Jane Lyon, which happened in 1846, and it is
6 reported at 9 Q.B. 147. I will not read the whole of the
7 headnote, because the first part of it does not bear on
8 this question. There were two questions before the court.
9 I will read the last part of the headnote, starting at the
10 end of the line with the word "in", which is five or six
11 lines up from the bottom.
12
13 "In a discussion between the attorneys of the
14 plaintiff and defendant, touching the dispensing
15 with certain witnesses at the trial, plaintiff's
16 attorney stated to defendant's attorney that the
17 debt was one owing from the late husband of
18 defendant. Held, that such statement could not
19 be given in evidence against plaintiff. "
20
21 The judgment is very short; it is on page 1233, three pages
22 on from the headnote, given by Lord Denman C.J.. It is
23 only the first paragraph of the judgment that matters for
24 this purpose.
25
26 "We are of opinion, in this case, that what was
27 said by the plaintiff's attorney in conversation
28 with the defendant's attorney was not receivable
29 in evidence. It appears not to have been said
30 as an admission of any disputed fact in the
31 cause, but was merely a loose conversation; and,
32 though spoken to the defendant's attorney, not
33 to a mere stranger, yet we think the principle
34 laid down in Parkins v. Hawkshaw applies."
35
36 My Lord, I stress the words "a mere stranger", because they
37 are words that recur in the authorities. We will submit
38 that, for these purposes, as an express authority or the
39 kind of authority which your Lordship may think, when
40 your Lordship has heard Ms. Lamb, Joanne Blackett had,
41 absent of that authority, a journalist who talks to an
42 Assistant Manager -- and this is quite apart from any
43 evidence -- in the hope of finding out some information for
44 a newspaper article is, for these purposes, "a mere
45 stranger".
46
47 The next case is The Kirkstall Brewery Company v. The
48 Furness Railway Company, (1874) L.R. 9 Q.B., 468. My Lord,
49 I will read the headnote in this case.
50
51 "In an action against a railway company for the
52 loss of a parcel containing money, the
53 defendants pleaded the Carriers Act, and
54 plaintiffs replied that the parcel was lost by
55 the felonious act of one of the company's
56 servants. It was proved that the parcel was
57 sent on Wednesday, the 27th of July, by the
58 defendants' railway, addressed to a clerk of
59 plaintiffs at U, where there was a station on
60 defendants' railway. That the parcel was not
