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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: 1930 To: 1959

This page lists 19 cases, and was prepared on 21 May 2019.

 
Gillie v Posho [1939] 2 All ER 196
1939


Evidence
The court discussed the rule that a witness' statement outside court may be used against him but not generally to support the truth of his statement.
1 Citers


 
Hollington v E Hewthorn and Co Ltd [1943] KB 587
1943
CA

Litigation Practice, Evidence
Decisions of an earlier tribunal were not binding or admissible in later proceedings where the earlier proceedings were before a court of criminal jurisdiction. Evidence of a prior conviction would not have been admissible in separate criminal proceedings to establish the truth of the underlying allegation. It was res inter alios acta.
1 Citers


 
Irving v Minister of Pensions 1945 SC 31
1945
SCS
Lord Justice Clerk Cooper
Scotland, Evidence, Benefits
Appeals were against decisions of Pensions Appeal Tribunals relating to claims for pensions in respect of death or disablement by war injuries. Article 4(1) of the Royal Warrant concerning Retired Pay, Pensions, etc dated December 1943 (Cmd 6489) provided that in no case was there to be an onus on any claimant to prove that the disablement or death of a member of the military forces was attributable to or aggravated by war service and that the benefit of any reasonable doubt should be given to the claimant: "In every issue of disputed facts between two parties, the onus of proof must inevitably be either on the one hand or the other, and the result of the provisions I have quoted is that the onus of proof is on the Minister."
1 Citers


 
Woods v Duncan [1946] AC 401; [1946] 1 All ER 420
1946

Viscount Simonds
Negligence, Evidence
Viscount Simonds said: "Before the liability of a defendant to pay damages for the tort of negligence can be established in an action brought by or on behalf of an injured man, three things have to be proved - (1) that the defendant failed to exercise due care; (2) that the defendant owed to the injured man a duty to exercise due care; and (3) that the defendant's failure was the "cause" of the injury in the proper sense of the term."
. . And as to the position where an individual was the defendant and the plaintiff sought to rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur: "I will assume against him, though I doubt whether the assumption is justified that this is a case in which the principle of res ipsa loquitur may be applied. But to apply this principle is to do no more than shift the burden of proof. A prima facie case is assumed to be made out which throws upon him the task of proving that he was not negligent. This does not mean that he must prove how and why the accident happened: it is sufficient if he satisfies the court that he personally was not negligent. It may well be that the court will be more easily satisfied of this fact if a plausible explanation which attributes the accident to some other cause is put forward on his behalf; but this is only a factor in the consideration of the probabilities."
1 Citers


 
Rose v The King [1947] 3 DLR 618
1947

Bissonnette J
Commonwealth, Evidence
(Quebec Court of King's Bench) The court upheld the admission as evidence in a criminal case of documents taken by a witness from the Russian Embassy which evidenced a plot, to which Russian officials were party, against the Canadian State. The law recognised the general inviolability of mission documents, but the general principle was subject to an exception in the case of documents which put the safety of the state to which the mission was accredited in peril. In that event, if seized by the Canadian State, they lost "the privilege of immunity".

 
Wright v Wright (1948) 77 CLR 191
1948

Dixon J
Commonwealth, Evidence
The civil standard of proof is flexible and the court may properly require a higher degree of probability which is appropriate to what is at stake. "... the nature and gravity of an issue necessarily determines the manner of attaining reasonable satisfaction of the truth of the issue."
1 Citers


 
Nicholas v Penny [1950] 2 KB 466; [1950] 2 All ER 89
1950
QBD
Lord Goddard
Road Traffic, Evidence
A police officer's assessment of a defendant's speed could be corroborated by evidence as to the reading of a speedometer, even if the latter device had not been checked for the accuracy of its reading, unless there were particular reasons for deciding otherwise. "The question in the present case is whether, if evidence is given that a mechanical device, such as a watch or speedometer, recorded a particular speed or a particular time, that recording is prima facie evidence on which the court can act. In a particular case the court might refuse to act on it, but here counsel for the respondent called our attention to the fact that the difference is very great. The offence is driving at a speed exceeding thirty miles an hour, and the evidence is that the speedometer showed that the appellant was exceeding that speed by ten miles an hour. It would be a very considerable error if the speedometer was as much out as that."
There is a very well-established presumption in the law of evidence that a measurement made by a technical or scientific instrument is accurate, if the instrument is of a type which as a matter of common knowledge or experience may be expected to be accurate. In my opinion, a tape measure is undoubtedly such an instrument.
Lord Goddard CJ set out the doctrine of 'per incuriam', saying: " ''Per incuriam' are those decisions given in ignorance or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provision or of some authority binding on the Court concerned, so that in such cases some part of the decision or some step in the reasoning on which it is based, is found, on that account to be demonstrably wrong."
1 Citers


 
Barkway v South Wales Transport [1950] AC 185; [1950] 1 All ER 392; [1950] WN 95
1950
HL
Lord Porter, Lord Radcliffe, Lord Normand
Litigation Practice, Evidence
The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur should not be used where the judge has presented to him alternate versions of the facts and his job is to decide between them.
Lord Radcliffe said that an event which in the ordinary course of things is more likely than not to have been caused by negligence is by itself evidence of negligence.
Lord Normand said: "the fact that an omnibus leaves the roadway and so causes injury to a passenger or to someone on the pavement is evidence relevant to infer that the injury was caused by the negligence of the owner, so that, if nothing more were proved, it would be a sufficient finding of liability against him."
As to the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur: "The maxim is no more than a rule of evidence affecting onus. It is based on commonsense, and its purpose is to enable justice to be done when the facts bearing on causation and on the care exercised by the defendant are at the outset unknown to the plaintiff and are or ought to be within the knowledge of the defendant."
1 Cites

1 Citers



 
 Jarman v Lambert and Cooke Contractors Ltd; CA 1951 - [1951] 2 KB 937
 
Bater v Bater [1951] P 35
1951
CA
Bucknill LJ, Somervell LJ, Denning LJ
Evidence, Family
The wife petitioned for divorce, alleging cruelty. Held: It had not been a misdirection for the petitioner to have to prove her case beyond reasonable doubt: "A high standard of proof" was required because of the importance of such a case to the parties and the community. although it was a misdirection for a judge in matrimonial proceedings to say that the criminal standard of proof applied to allegations of cruelty it was correct to say that they had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Denning LJ: "The difference of opinion which has been evoked about the standard of proof in recent cases may well turn out to be more a matter of words than anything else. It is of course true that by our law a higher standard of proof is required in criminal cases than in civil cases. But this is subject to the qualification that there is no absolute standard in either case. In criminal cases the charge must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, but there may be degrees of proof within that standard.
As Best CJ and many other great judges have said, 'in proportion as the crime is enormous, so ought the proof to be clear'. So also in civil cases, the case may be proved by a preponderance of probability, but there may be degrees of probability within that standard. The degree depends on the subject-matter. A civil court, when considering a charge of fraud, will naturally require for itself a higher degree of probability than that which it would require when asking if negligence is established. It does not adopt so high a degree as a criminal court, even when it is considering a charge of a criminal nature; but still it does require a degree of probability which is commensurate with the occasion. Likewise, a divorce court should require a degree of probability which is proportionate to the subject-matter."
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
Teper v The Queen [1952] AC 480
1952
PC
Lord Normand
Evidence, Commonwealth
The defendant was charged with arson of his own shop. A woman had been heard to shout to a passing motorist "Your place burning and you going away from the fire". Held: the defendant's alibi could not be contradicted by the evidence of a policeman that he had heard the woman. The weakness of hearsay evidence is that its quality cannot be directly tested in court: "The truthfulness and accuracy of the person whose words are spoken by another witness cannot be tested by cross-examination and the light which his demeanour would throw on his testimony is lost." A statement admitted under the doctrine of res gestae with words which “if not absolutely contemporaneous with the action or event, [are] .... so closely associated with it, in time, place and circumstances, that they are part of the thing being done, and so an item or part of real evidence and not merely a reported statement”. However: “For identification purposes in a criminal trial the event with which the words sought to be proved must be so connected as to form part of the res gestae, is the commission of the crime itself . . . ”
As to the rule that words may be proved when they form part of the res gestae, it appears to rest "ultimately on two propositions, that human utterance is both a fact and a means of communication, and that human action may be so interwoven with words that the significance of the action cannot be understood without the correlative words, and the dissociation of the words from the action would impede the discovery of truth. But the judicial application of these two propositions, which do not always combine harmoniously, has never been precisely formulated in a general principle.”
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Regina v Straffen [1952] 2 QB 911
20 Aug 1952
CCA
Slade, Devlin, Gorman JJ
Evidence
The defendant had been arrested for murders of young girls, but after being found unfit to plead, he was committed to Broadmoor. While he escaped another girl was murdered, and he was charged. The prosecutor sought to bring in evidence of admissions made at Broadmoor and of the earlier allegations. Held: The Judges' Rules were intended to control the admission of statements made to the police, not statements alsewhere. The statement was admissible. The defendant had denied the murder but in doing so had admitted the earlier murders. The general rules is not to admit such evidence. The similar fact evidence could be described as evidence of pure propensity to commit crimes similar to that with which he was charged.
1 Cites

1 Citers



 
 Davie v Magistrates of Edinburgh; 1953 - 1953 SLT 54; 1953 SC 34

 
 Ladd v Marshall; CA 29-Nov-1954 - [1954] 1 WLR 1489; [1954] 3 All ER 745; [1954] EWCA Civ 1

 
 Hornal v Neuberger Products Ltd; CA 1956 - [1957] 1 QB 247; [1956] 3 All ER 970
 
Moore v R Fox and Sons [1956] 1 QB 596
1956
CA
Lord Evershed MR
Personal Injury, Evidence
The plaintiff, a workman in the course of his employment, was injured by an unexplained explosion. Held: The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applied, no explanation for the explosion having been offered. "Res ipsa loquitur" is a rule of evidence based upon common sense.
Lord Evershed MR said: "It will be necessary, therefore, for me to consider in some detail the evidence produced before the judge. But I will anticipate at once my conclusions. If, as the judge thought, this was a case of res ipsa loquitur,that is, a case in which this accident having regard to all the circumstances in which it occurred, spoke for itself and led to the inference of negligence, then, with all respect to him, I do not agree with his conclusion that the defendants thereafter discharged that onus by calling four expert witnesses, the result of whose evidence was, after all, that the accident was inexplicable." and "It must, as I venture to think, always be a question whether upon proof of the happening of the particular event, it can with truth be said that the thing speaks for itself. The event or thing offending, may, or may not, produce that result. Not every accident has, without more, that effect. If, on a closer analysis of the happening and in circumstances, it does not in truth appear fairly to follow that the proper inference is one of negligence, then the case is not one of res ipsa loquitur at all".
1 Citers


 
Subramaniam v Director of Public Prosecutions [1956] 1 WLR 965
1956
PC

Evidence, Crime, Commonwealth
(Malaysia) The defendant sought to advance a defence of duress under a section of the Penal Code of the Federated Malay States which provided that, with certain exceptions, "nothing is an offence which is done by a person who is compelled to do it by threats, which, at the time of doing it, reasonably cause the apprehension that instant death to that person will otherwise be the consequence." He sought to have admitted evidence of threats made. Held: What was said to the defendant was admissible to show that the defendant had good reason to fear death or personal injury. Hearsay evidence was admissible as to the state of the defendant's mind. The appeal was allowed because evidence relied on by the appellant to show that he had had a reasonable apprehension of instant death was wrongly excluded.
The Board recognised the distinction between adducing a statement as evidence of something expressly or impliedly asserted in the statement and simply as evidence that the statement was made: 'Evidence of a statement made to a witness by a person who is not himself called as a witness may or may not be hearsay. It is hearsay and inadmissible when the object of the evidence is to establish the truth of what is contained in the statement. It is not hearsay and is admissible when it is proposed to establish by the evidence, not the truth of the statement, but the fact that it was made.'
1 Citers


 
Sullivan v Gallagher and Craig (No 2) 1959 SC 243; [1960] SLT 70
1959
SCS

Scotland, Evidence, Negligence
The pursuer was injured at work. As a dock worker he was asked to operate a rented truck. The court was asked whether the employer was under a duty to inspect.

 
Watson v Cammell Laird and Co Ltd [1959] 1 WLR 702
1959
CA
Chadwick v. Bowman
Evidence, Legal Professions
Referring to the case of Chadwick v. Bowman: ".... the essential fact was that certain letters which the defendant had received, and copies of letters which he had written, had been at some stage destroyed by the defendant, and in order to replace them the defendant obtained from the third party, from and to whom they had been written, copies, which therefore would be available as secondary evidence of the original documents which he himself had lost or destroyed. The court said, accordingly, that these copies, the mere replacements of something which he would have had to produce himself, must be produced."
1 Cites

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