The recent decision in Cathay may signal an increasingly strict approach by the courts to witness evidence, as Abigail Rushton & Simon Heatley report
- Concern that witness statements have become a reconstruction of case documents rather than the recollection of the witnesses.
- Undesirable risk that a statement contains detailed evidence on the documents that a witness would not be capable of giving at trial.
Increasingly, the judiciary has expressed concern about lengthy, complex, over-worked witness statements. This has led to calls for reform and heightened scrutiny being placed upon witness statements by the courts, as illustrated most recently in Cathay Pacific Airlines Ltd v Lufthansa Technik AG [2019] EWHC 715.
The case for reform has grown from concerns that witness statements are more a product of lawyers than the actual evidence of the witnesses. This raises fundamental questions about the place and purpose of witness statements.
The point of a witness statement is to provide evidence, in the witness’s own words, about specific issues of fact. Introduced as a measure of reform in 1986, written witness statements are intended to
