Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 22
1 this document.
2
3 MS. STEEL: Can scientific journals only be put to experts, or
4 can they be put to witnesses of fact as well?
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The reason they are put to experts is experts
7 are giving their scientific opinion. They are put to them
8 to see if they actually agree with the opinions which are
9 reached. In fact, the various assertions of fact which
10 appear normally in the first part of the article are, by
11 and large, accepted by the witness when it is put to them
12 for the purpose of giving their opinion. That is the area
13 which has always appeared to me to be a grey area. It is
14 merely as a matter of convenience that that is done.
15 Sometimes the expert says, "Actually I do not accept that
16 because it looks to me as if their methods of collecting
17 the information are suspect, so the information itself may
18 be unreliable". But you are seeking to use it for a
19 different purpose as evidence of the facts which are stated
20 in it; not as any way to getting an expression of expert
21 opinion. I am not trying to put you down. I am just
22 trying to express the problem to you.
23
24 MS. STEEL: No. It was a separate point really. It is related
25 to it. If, for example, we had an expert report
26 by -- well, if we had wanted to put one of the expert
27 reports on advertising to Mr. Hawkes, who was a witness of
28 fact on advertising, could we have asked him about that?
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think you would have to point out which
31 particular one. It is very difficult to deal with a very
32 broad thing. You mean, an expression of an opinion in an
33 advertising witness put to witnesses as to fact?
34
35 MS. STEEL: We had a whole load of expert papers, whatever you
36 call them, that Mr. Rampton was putting to Sue Dibb. If we
37 had a paper like that, for example, could we put it to
38 somebody like Mr. Hawkes, who is not an expert, and then
39 kind of use it to test his evidence based on that?
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If he is not an expert, I do not know why you
42 would be putting a scientific reference to him to test his
43 evidence. I am not sure Mr. Hawkes is a very good example
44 because he might be thought to -- he obviously has a
45 position with the Second Plaintiff just as Mr. Green had
46 with the First Plaintiff. To that extent they are
47 executives, but they might be thought to be, to some
48 extent, experts as well because of the experience they have
49 got of the advertising side of the business.
50
51 MS. STEEL: They might be experts in advertising, but they would
52 not be experts on its effects though.
53
54 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I would rather disagree with that. You might
55 say someone else is more an expert, but ----
56
57 MR. MORRIS: They certainly would not be an independent expert.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is another matter. You have introduced
60 another adjective there. They are still experts. You might
