Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 15
1 illustration of the press cutting. In fact, that was
2 designed to help you in one respect because there may be
3 statements in press cuttings which are clearly made by
4 Americans, or whatever, so you would be able to have one of
5 the reasons in rule 25 of Order 38 in your full and formal
6 notice, if Mr. Rampton chose to keep you to the letter of
7 it.
8
9 MR. MORRIS: I think the grey area is that we have been confused
10 or what maybe everyone has been a little bit hot under the
11 collar about is that if we did a Civil Evidence Act Notice
12 on a newspaper clipping, we would not been assuming that
13 every word in that was obviously true and evidence. But
14 the point about the things that we have been putting Civil
15 Evidence Act Notices on is they have been official reports,
16 or Mr. Clark's statement, or whatever.
17
18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There, you see, as far as I am concerned,
19 that has nothing to do with admissibility. The fact that
20 it is an official report ---
21
22 MR. MORRIS: Does not automatically make it .....
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- does not make it any more admissible than
25 the newspaper article. What you are doing is you are
26 giving a Civil Evidence Act Notice as to a statement made
27 or statements made in the report, just as you are in
28 relation to statements made in the newspaper report.
29
30 We have then got the question of admissibility. If you
31 manage to make those statements admissible, it might be
32 that a statement made by an Environmental Health Officer in
33 the report, once you have got it admissible by way of Civil
34 Evidence Act Notices and so on, would merit more weight
35 than a statement, apparently, made by Mr. Jones to a
36 newspaper report when we cannot even find out anything
37 about Mr. Jones, do you see?
38
39 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But that is a difference of weight, not
42 admissibility.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: But section 4 is about allowing the material relied
45 upon by someone acting in the course of their duty to be
46 also admissible in evidence.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Right, it is, but that comes through the
49 filter of the person who collected it.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: Yes. But the thing is, the point, for example, I
52 mean a perfect example, is the Preston report. I would
53 assume that the entire report is admissible as evidence.
54 It is possible, for example, a report could contain
55 newspaper cuttings that the person making the report could
56 not possibly know whether they were true or not.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, if I stop you there? The Preston
59 report, as you call it, I had not seen it as a document
60 which is or forms part of a record -- maybe you are right,
