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.
    16
    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.

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