Day 119 - 02 May 95 - Page 58


     
     1        that distance of authenticity, it would not be admissible.
     2        People give all sorts of false reasons for the things they
     3        do, in particular, for leaving the jobs that they are in.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That might go to weight which may be the
     6        reason for the hearsay rule in the first place but you say
     7        that is  -----
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  That is classically the reason for hearsay.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- justification, you would say, of the
    12        hearsay rule in this case.  It would depend upon the
    13        hearsay rule.
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  It is because it cannot be tested, it is
    16        because there is no way of knowing whether it is the truth
    17        or not, that the hearsay rule exists in the first place.
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  We have to draw a line somewhere on this when
    20        you put in a computer printout which has times on it.  That
    21        is -----
    22
    23   MR. RAMPTON:  Of course, that is hearsay, my Lord.  I have
    24        said -----
    25
    26   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Virtually everything which is down in some
    27        kind of record is hearsay.  It may come under a statutory
    28        exception to the hearsay rule.
    29
    30   MR. RAMPTON:  That is what I said the other day.  If objection
    31        is taken to those computer records because, undoubtedly,
    32        they are hearsay, they are dealt with -- it is quite a
    33        precise mechanism -- under section 5 of the 1968 Act and
    34        I can deal with them.
    35
    36        My Lord, what people say about the reasons why they leave
    37        work ought not to be admitted unless it also be the case
    38        that the Company has itself, as it were, accepted after
    39        proper investigation or otherwise that those reasons are
    40        true reasons, valid reasons.  If the company has said:
    41         "Well, this is a very poor thing; we do not think we are
    42        paying our staff enough because we were paying the maximum
    43        and other companies are all paying much more and, no doubt,
    44        the reasons they have given for leaving are all perfectly
    45        true and accurate", that would be a different matter.  But
    46        I doubt very much whether that was likely to turn out to be
    47        the state of affairs.
    48
    49   MR. MORRIS:  If the Company compiled statistics and the
    50        information, it is because they believe there is some value 
    51        to doing it for them to monitor.  I think, therefore, on 
    52        that basis alone it would be relevant in itself. 
    53        Secondly -----
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just consider where you are at the moment.
    56        The first difficulty is that Mr. Nicholson is not even sure
    57        that they were compiled.  So, at the moment it looks as if
    58        he does not know just how they were compiled and just what
    59        the Company's attitude towards them were.
    60

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