Fuller v Strum
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 20 December 2000 |
| Date | 20 December 2000 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
CHANCERY DIVISION
Before Mr Jules Sher, QC
Experts - expert evidence on handwriting - lay evidence preferred
The evidence of a lay witness could be preferred to that of a handwriting expert.
Mr Jules Sher, QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Chancery Division, so held on December 20, 2000 when finding that the will of Max Strum, deceased and father of Geoffrey Bernard Strum, the defendant, had not been forged but that Max Strum did not know or approve of its contents except for one legacy, in an action brought by Michael Fuller, the claimant, to propound the will.
HIS LORDSHIP said that on the question as to whether the will was forged the handwriting expert, Dr Audrey Giles, was of the opinion that the will had been forged whereas the lay witnesses gave evidence that it had not.
Although in In re B (a Minor)WLR ((2000) 1 WLR 790) the Court of Appeal refused to accept the evidence of two lay witnesses in preference to the uncontroverted expert medical evidence of two consultant radiologists, there was a difference between the type of expert evidence led in In re B and the evidence contained in the handwriting...
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Naylor v Maher
... ... LEAHY v CORBOY 1969 IR 148 JR IN RE 1993 ILRM 657 GILLETTE v HOLT 2000 AER (D) 299 2001 CH 210 2000 2 AER 289 FULLER v STRUM 2002 1 WLR 1097 CRAIG v LAOUREUX 1920 AC 349 SCAMMELL v FARMER 2008 EWHC 1100 (CH) KEATING ON PROBATE 3ED 2007 PAR ... ...
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Pauline Greaves (Claimant/Defendant to Counterclaim) v Gary Matthew Stolkin
...to take effect according to its terms, the Court must be "satisfied that the contents do truly represent the testator's intentions" (see Fuller v Strum [2001] EWCA Civ 1879, [2002] 1 WLR 1097, at paragraph 65). 68 In the past, the Courts tended to adopt a two-stage approach to issues of kn......
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Gill v Woodall & Others
... ... of one's will is traditional language for saying that the will “represented [one's] testamentary intentions”—see per Chadwick LJ in Fuller v. Strum [2002] 1 WLR 1097 , para 59. The proposition that Mrs Gill knew and approved of the contents of the Will appears, at first sight, very hard ... ...