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

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