Gareth Kagan and Beverley Barton offer some guidance on witness statements from recent cases
Recent Court of Appeal decisions on applications for leave to adduce fresh evidence on appeal provide some useful pointers of good practice regarding witness statements.
Three legs of a stool
Paragraph 52.11(2) of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) provides that an appeal court subject to the CPR will not receive: (i) fresh oral evidence; (ii) evidence which was not before the lower court, unless the court orders otherwise.
Although the pre-CPR requirement for “special grounds” no longer applies, there has not been a sea change in the attitude of the courts, so we need to take a trip back to 1954, and a case featuring the following facts:
a tin of money stashed under a bed—with the credit crunch, perhaps this will become a feature in modern cases;
alleged payment of £1,000 in a brown paper parcel, but no receipt;
a wife compelled to give evidence regarding her husband, at trial, the day after filing for divorce on the grounds of adultery; and
a leading judgment by Lord Denning who described it
