Judgment was handed down today in a multi-track possession trial in which I represented the local authority. The “simple” issue was whether the defendant had resided with the (mother) tenant at the time of her death and for at least the previous 12 months leading up to that time such that he was entitled to succeed to her (pre-1 April 2012) secure tenancy.
There was no documentary evidence supporting the defendant’s case and he relied on his own witness statement, that of a long-standing friend and some hearsay evidence (e.g. a letter from a former neighbour).
In her ex tempore judgment allowing the claim for possession, the Judge cited R (Dutta) v General Medical Council [2020] EWHC 1974 (Admin) and the judgment of Warby J at paragraph 39 and I thought it was a helpful reminder to place on this blog as to the proper judicial approach to the determination of facts:
“There is now a considerable body of authority setting out the lessons of experience and of science in relation to the judicial determination of facts. Recent first instance authorities include Gestmin SGPS SA v Credit Suisse (UK) Ltd [2013] EWHC 3650 (Comm) (Leggatt J, as he then was) and two decisions of Mostyn J: Lachaux v Lachaux [2017] EWHC 385 (Fam) [2017] 4 WLR 57 and Carmarthenshire County Council v Y [2017] EWFC 36 [2017] 4 WLR 136. Key aspects of this learning were distilled by Stewart J in Kimathi v Foreign and Commonwealth Office [2018] EWHC 2066 (QB) [96]:
i) Gestmin:
We believe memories to be more faithful than they are. Two common errors are to suppose (1) that the stronger and more vivid the recollection, the more likely it is to be accurate; (2) the more confident another person is in their recollection, the more likely it is to be accurate.
Memories are fluid and malleable, being constantly rewritten whenever they are retrieved. This is even true of “flash bulb” memories (a misleading term), i.e. memories of experiencing or learning of a particularly shocking or traumatic event.
Events can come to be recalled as memories which did not happen at all or which happened to somebody else.
The process of civil litigation itself subjects the memories of witnesses to powerful biases.
Considerable interference with memory is introduced in civil litigation by the procedure of preparing for trial. Statements are often taken a long time after relevant events and drafted by a lawyer who is conscious of the significance for the issues in the case of what the witness does or does not say.
The best approach from a judge is to base factual findings on inferences drawn from documentary evidence and known or probable facts. “This does not mean that oral testimony serves no useful purpose… But its value lies largely… 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. Above all, it is important to avoid the fallacy of supposing that, because a witness has confidence in his or her recollection and is honest, evidence based on that recollection provides any reliable guide to the truth”.
ii) Lachaux:
Mostyn J cited extensively from Gestmin and referred to two passages in earlier authorities. I extract from those citations, and from Mostyn J’s judgment, the following:
“Witnesses, especially those who are emotional, who think they are morally in the right, tend very easily and unconsciously to conjure up a legal right that did not exist. 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 taken down in writing immediately after the incident occurred. Therefore, contemporary documents are always of the utmost importance…”
“…I have found it essential in cases of fraud, when considering the credibility of witnesses, always to test their veracity by reference to the objective fact proved independently of their testimony, in particular by reference to the documents in the case, and also to pay particular regard to their motives and to the overall probabilities…”
Mostyn J said of the latter quotation, “these wise words are surely of general application and are not confined to fraud cases… it is certainly often difficult to tell whether a witness is telling the truth and I agree with the view of Bingham J that the demeanour of a witness is not a reliable pointer to his or her honesty.”
iii) Carmarthenshire County Council:
The general rule is that oral evidence given under cross-examination is the gold standard because it reflects the long-established common law consensus that the best way of assessing the reliability of evidence is by confronting the witness.
However, oral evidence under cross-examination is far from the be all and end all of forensic proof. Referring to paragraph 22 of Gestmin, Mostyn J said: “…this approach applies equally to all fact-finding exercises, especially where the facts in issue are in the distant past. This approach does not dilute the importance that the law places on cross-examination as a vital component of due process, but it does place it in its correct context…”
The Dutta case is worth reading in its entirety and emphasises that assessment as to the credibility/probative value of evidence is not a binary choice.