Day 263 - 14 Jun 96 - Page 32
1 Mustill J. is answering the question "what is fair" by
2 saying you must disclose everything which relates to the
3 evidence you deployed in court. By that, you may be
4 thought to mean everything relating to the evidence or
5 emanating from the particular witness or the particular
6 document which you deploy in court.
7
8 My Lord, that may be so. It can, perhaps, be seen from the
9 way in which he dealt with the second question, which was
10 list of questions prepared for use by the Greek lawyer who
11 interviewed the seaman. That starts in the middle of the
12 right-hand column on page 139:
13
14 "The Judge then considered whether privilege
15 had been waived in relation to the list of
16 questions which had been used by T, the Greek
17 lawyer, in his interview with the seaman:
18
19 'As stated in the reasons which I gave for my
20 previous ruling, I believe that in summary and
21 in perhaps not very concise terms one can see a
22 rule of positive law in the interests of
23 justice, that where a party chooses to deploy
24 evidence which would otherwise be privileged the
25 court and the opposition must, in relation to
26 the issue in question, be given the opportunity
27 to satisfy themselves that they have the whole
28 of the material and not merely a fragment. Thus
29 I am start by asking myself what are the issues
30 in relation to which the material has been
31 deployed? Of course, the prime issue is whether
32 and, if so, in what circumstances, the seaman
33 accepted the truth of an account of events
34 different from one which on two other occasions
35 he has put forward. This involves the question
36 whether he did give the answers recorded in
37 document P 35, whether that document represents
38 a complete record of what happened and of what
39 might be termed the general atmosphere of the
40 meeting, having regard to the seaman's evidence
41 that he signed his statement to get rid of the
42 lawyers.'
43
44 "It was essential, therefore, for the court
45 to see the meeting as a whole, and for that
46 purpose the Judge's view was that the whole of
47 the substance of the meeting was a 'legitimate
48 subject for disclosure and for
49 cross-examination.'
50
51 "With that broad approach in mind, I now
52 turn to the specific issues before me. I will
53 deal first with the list of questions."
54
55 My Lord, that was the list of questions which the Greek
56 lawyer had used on behalf of the Plaintiffs at the meeting
57 with the seaman.
58
59 "Mr. Evans" -- he was counsel for the
60 Plaintiffs -- "submits that the mere fact that a
