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

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