Documentary Evidence in UK Law

But its value lies largely, as I see it, in the opportunity which cross-examination affords to subject the documentary record to critical scrutiny and to gauge the personality, motivations and working practices of a witness, rather than in testimony of what the witness recalls of particular conversations and events.

It is a truism, often used in accident cases, that with every day that passes the memory becomes fainter and the imagination becomes more active. For that reason a witness, however honest, rarely persuades a judge that his present recollection is preferable to that which was take down in writing immediately after the accident occurred.

The jurisdiction of English courts to order persons within its jurisdiction to provide oral or documentary evidence in aid of proceedings in foreign courts has always been exclusively statutory.

None the less, not to have seen the witnesses puts appellate judges in a permanent position of disadvantage as against the trial judge, and, unless it can be shown that he has failed to use or has palpably misused his advantage, the higher Court ought not to take the responsibility of reversing conclusions so arrived at, merely on the result of their own comparisons and criticisms of the witnesses and of their own view of the probabilities of the case.

But it would be a strong thing indeed to use such case management powers to exclude the admissible evidence of one of the parties on the central facts of the case. It might be grossly unjust to the other party, even contrary to his right to a fair trial under article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to decide a claim principally on the untested evidence of a party who had not been subject to cross-examination of any sort.

It is one of a line of distinguished judicial observations that emphasise the fallibility of human memory and the need to assess witness evidence in its proper place alongside contemporaneous documentary evidence and evidence upon which undoubted or probable reliance can be placed. Heuristics or mental short cuts are no substitute for this essential judicial function.

It follows that judges before whom contested permission applications are listed, and in their conduct of them, should discourage long hearings and/or the filing by both parties of voluminous documentary evidence for consideration at them.