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'
