Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 09
1 answers to interrogatories have a slightly greater status
2 than mere admissions against interest made out of court,
3 for this reason: they are part of the procedure of the
4 court whose whole underlying basis is to avoid the need to
5 call evidence at trial; that is the whole purpose, to save
6 time and costs.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I think would be pointless now is
9 getting out various answers to the interrogatories and
10 poring over them to see what might be in and what might
11 not. The only matter I have in mind at the moment is
12 this -- and it is a question upon which Ms. Steel was asked
13 anyway -- there was the interrogatory where the wrong
14 street number was put in the interrogatory, and she
15 answered to the effect that she was not there on a certain
16 day, when I think it appears she was, and there was the
17 argument whether that was misleading or not. What I make
18 of it, I am not going to give any indication of at the
19 moment. But that is there as a matter of fact that
20 Ms. Steel made that answer, just as much as if it had been
21 made in a pleading or in an answer to a letter; a statement
22 made on behalf of one party is made by their solicitor, one
23 would infer, with their knowledge and authority, and unless
24 there evidence to the contrary, and that has been proved to
25 be untrue.
26
27 MR. RAMPTON: That is right.
28
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Or a fact is pleaded in a defence or a
30 Statement of Claim and that is proved to be untrue. The
31 judge can ask himself -- if I think that statement was
32 true, whether in an interrogatory or in a pleading or in a
33 solicitors' letter -- I can ask myself: where does that
34 take me? It is a different situation at the moment, I am
35 minded to think, where it is in a witness statement served,
36 because of the provision of Order 38, rule 2A(11).
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: Mr. Atkinson is beavering away at the moment.
39 I will not say anything more about that. He is saying that
40 maybe Rule (11) is not the one that matters, but perhaps
41 I can come back to that next week.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Perhaps you could. If that were so, I could
44 see that there was good reason for that, because it is in
45 everyone's interests that people feel uninhibited about
46 exchanging witness statements without having to look over
47 their shoulder: "What is going to happen next if I do?"
48 But there we are.
49
50 MS. STEEL: Can I just ask -- which I was trying to do some time
51 ago -- you said at page 7, line 53: "But the fact that that
52 was the answer given to an interrogatory is always going to
53 be", and it just says -----
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: In the forum. I mean that it is in the body
56 of information I have before me in this case -- the forum
57 being the court, as it were.
58
59 MS. STEEL: Right, OK.
60
