Appeal from finding that a contract award had not been obtained by bribery. The defendant said that the confessions of bribery had been extracted by torture and appealed a finding that the contract was enforceable.
Held: The appeal succeeded. The judge failed to ask and answer the correct legal question as to what weight should be accorded to the confession evidence and failed to take all the appropriate matters into account and to exclude irrelevant matters in considering whether the alleged bribe was paid. As a matter of law, if an allegation that a statement was made as a result of torture has not been proved on the balance of probabilities, a court when estimating the weight to be given to the statement as hearsay evidence in civil proceedings must entirely disregard the possibility that the statement was obtained by torture, even if on the evidence given at trial the court considers this to be a serious possibility which it cannot rule out.
The judge’s decision was ‘unsustainable’: ‘The judge did not follow the logical steps necessary to reach a proper evaluation of the admissible evidence. He failed to ask and answer the correct legal question as to what weight should be accorded to the admissions evidence. The judge ought to have said why he was unable to place any reliance on the admissions, if that was his view. The judge also fell into legal error in failing to take all the appropriate matters into account in deciding the crucial bribery issue. As we have also said, the judge failed to exclude irrelevant matters (including his lingering doubt as to whether the admissions were procured by torture) in considering whether the alleged bribe was paid.’
Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court, Lord Justice Newey, and Dame Elizabeth Gloster DBE
[2018] EWCA Civ 1732
Bailii
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Shagang Shipping Company Ltd v HNA Group Company Ltd ComC 16-May-2016
It was said that a contract had been procured only by bribery. The defendant said that the so called confessions had been obtained by torture, and were inadmissible. No one with first-hand knowledge of the alleged bribery or torture gave evidence . .
Cited by:
Appeal from – Shagang Shipping Company Ltd v HNA Group Company Ltd SC 5-Aug-2020
Allegations had been made that a contract had been procured by bribery. The other party said that the admissions of bribery had been extracted by torture and were inadmissible. The CA had decided that the unproven possibility that it was obtained by . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 29 July 2021; Ref: scu.620479