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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  














Evidence - From: 1900 To: 1929

This page lists 14 cases, and was prepared on 21 May 2019.

 
Regina v Knight and Thayre (1905) 20 Cox 711
1905

Channell, J
Criminal Practice, Evidence
Statements were rejected, because they had been obtained from the accused before arrest by means of a long interrogation by a person in authority over him. The court adverted thus to the case of questions put by a constable after arresting:- "when he has taken anyone into custody . . he ought not to question the prisoner . . I am not aware of any distinct rule of evidence that, if such improper questions are asked, the answers to them are inadmissible, but there is clear authority for saying that the judge at the trial may in his discretion refuse to allow the answers to be given in evidence."
1 Citers


 
Hales v Kerr [1908] 2 KB 601
1908

Channell J
Evidence
The court heard evidence that individuals other than the plaintiff had contracted infectious diseases after being shaven by a barber who had a practice of using razors and appliances that were dirty and unsanitary.
Channell J said: "It is not legitimate to charge a man with an act of negligence on a day in October and to ask a jury to infer that he was negligent on every day in September . . But when the issue is that the defendant pursues a course of conduct which is dangerous to his neighbours, it is legitimate to show that his conduct has been a source of danger on other occasions, and it is a legitimate inference that, having caused injury on those occasions, it has caused injury in the plaintiff's case also . ."
1 Citers


 
Regina v Best (1909) 1 KBD 692
1909
CCA
Channell, J
Criminal Practice, Evidence
Referring to the admissibility of answers to questions put before an arrest, "it is quite impossible to say that the fact that a question of this kind has been asked invalidates the trial".
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corpn v Robertson [1909] AC 404
1909
HL
Shaw L
Evidence
The appellant agreed to pay £1,000 to the executors of the owner of a diary if he was fatally injured in a railway accident within twelve months of his name being registered at its head office. The respondent's husband filled up and forwarded an application for registration which the appellant acknowledged. The appellant did not keep a register, but it arranged and filed the applications for registration in alphabetical order. The issue arose whether the respondent's application was registered (interpreted as meaning arranged alphabetically with other applications and filed) within the year. Held: The fact that the date of registration rested peculiarly and solely within the knowledge of the appellant was vital. This was plainly relevant to the issue on whom the parties to the contract must have intended to impose the burden of proving compliance or non-compliance with the twelve month time limit. In the case of a transaction of this kind" the onus of satisfying the court as to when registration was effected (and accordingly that it was effected more than twelve months prior to the accident) rested on the appellant. In a word, upon a fair reading of the contract construed in the light of the circumstances that the appellant assumed responsibility for effecting registration and would alone know when it took place, the persuasive burden of proof that registration was effected more than twelve months before the accident rested on the appellant and the appellant had failed to discharge that burden.
1 Citers



 
 Regina v Booth and Jones; 1910 - (1910) 5 Criminal Appeal Reports 179

 
 Nocton v Lord Ashburton; HL 1914 - [1914] AC 932

 
 Ibrahim v The King; PC 6-Mar-1914 - [1914] UKPC 1; [1914] AC 599

 
 Rex v Smith; 1915 - (1915) 11 Cr App R 229
 
The Zamora [1916] 2 AC 77
1916
PC
Lord Parker of Waddington
Evidence, Constitutional
Lord Parker said: "The idea that the King in Council, or indeed any branch of the Executive, has power to prescribe or alter the law to be administered by the Courts of law in this country is out of harmony with the principles of our Constitution. It is true that, under a number of modern statutes, various branches of the Executive have power to make rules having the force of statutes, but all such rules derive their validity from the statute which creates the power, and not from the executive body by which they are made. No one would contend that the prerogaive involves any power to prescribe or alter the law administered in Courts of Common Law or Equity . . Those who are responsible for the national security must be the sole judge of what the national security requires. It would be obviously undesirable that such matters should be made the subject of evidence in a court of law or otherwise discussed in public."
1 Citers



 
 Rex v Baskerville; 1916 - [1916-17] All ER Rep 38; [1917] 12 CAR 81

 
 Joy v Phillips Mills and Co Ltd; CA 1916 - [1916] 1 KB 849

 
 Jones v South Eastern and Chatham Railway; 1918 - [1918] 87 LJKB 775
 
Rutherford v Richardson [1923] AC 1
1923
HL
Viscount Birkenhead
Evidence
The decision of legal issues must depend on rigid rules of evidence necessarily general in their scope. It was very likely, therefore, in individual applications, to present an appearance of artificiality and even of inconsistency: "The issues pronounced upon by courts in criminal, and indeed, in civil matters are attended with such decisive consequences that the adoption in matters of evidence of a standard of admissibility which is so cautious as to be meticulous may not only be defended, but is in fact essential." and "Applying these considerations to the kind of difficulty which has often presented itself in the Divorce Court, we find that a case which has sometimes been ignorantly derided is in fact both logical and defensible: for instance A, a husband, brings against his wife, B, a petition for divorce on the ground of her adultery with a named co-respondent, C. There is some independent evidence against both B and C, but not sufficient to justify a positive adverse conclusion. B, however, makes a full confession. Here the court may very reasonably pronounce a decree against B, while concluding that the matter is not established as against C. Indeed, to hold otherwise would be to lay it down that the admission or confession of B - which may be quite untrue and which may be induced by hidden and private motives - is to be treated as good evidence against C. And so it happens that the court may quite reasonably conclude that it is proved that B has committed adultery with C, but not that C has committed adultery with B."
1 Citers


 
Scott Paper Co v Drayton Paper Works Ltd [1927] 44 RPC 151
1927

Clauson J
Evidence, Litigation Practice
Parties to litigation should 'be encouraged fully and frankly to put their cards on the table.'
1 Citers


 
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