Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 19
1 cross-examination, if so desired. But what then follows
2 appears to me to be hearsay. It does not explain how she
3 can come to say what she does say in the first two
4 sentences of the paragraph, because that has clearly come
5 from her own observations. So what other people have told
6 her is nothing to do with those first two sentences.
7
8 Then if you turn over, the same applies to the fourth
9 complete paragraph on the second page. We have the first
10 all but the last sentence, which is Miss Tobin's
11 observation of a young black woman arguing with her shift
12 manager. Well, Miss Tobin can give her evidence of that,
13 so you can read that. But what the young black woman is
14 said by Miss Tobin to have said later is pure hearsay. It
15 is not admissible as evidence of the truth of what the
16 young black woman said, and it has no relevance, by reason
17 of being said alone. It is only if it was true that it
18 would be relevant.
19
20 Do not forget that relevance is the very first test of
21 admissibility of evidence. It is only after that, that you
22 go on to subsidiary rules like the hearsay rule.
23
24 Then, in the next paragraph, Mr. Rampton has not objected
25 to the first sentence. He objects to the next two, which
26 seem to me to be pure hearsay. If Mr. Rampton were to
27 ask: "How could you possibly conclude that crew members
28 were clearly frightened of speaking their minds on film",
29 then there could be no objection to Miss Tobin declaring
30 hearsay. But that is only if and when one comes to
31 challenging it; and so one can go on through the rest of
32 the matters which are cut out.
33
34 But there is no point in having it in, because I cannot
35 take account of it; therefore, what is the use of having it
36 in?
37
38 MS. STEEL: I think Mr. Morris said that he was not going to
39 read it out, that he was just going to ask the witness
40 whether she had any other source for that information.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. There is no point in doing that, because
43 the bits which are not excluded one will infer are from
44 Miss Tobin's own observation, direct observation. So you
45 do not need to ask: "Where do you get that from?" Such a
46 question could only be designed to elicit an answer: "Well,
47 someone told me this, that or the other."
48
49 MS. STEEL: I do not know whether there is a particular example
50 in here, but I just think that an example of the type of
51 occasion when it might be useful to clarify is if someone
52 says "I was told", and then you need to know whether they
53 were told by managers or by crew, because if they were told
54 by managers then it would not necessarily be hearsay.
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If there is any doubt about that, you might
57 ask. I mean, you might have -- I have not heard argument
58 yet on each individual one; I am just going through them.
59 I have not got any further. When you get to the bottom of
60 page 2, you might have an argument about that, that what
