Day 194 - 01 Dec 95 - Page 17
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Absolutely. I do not mind saying that in
2 this case, where people who have perfectly good characters
3 as they come into the witness box, however strongly they
4 may feel about one thing or another, most judges are very
5 reluctant to find that people are lying, which is quite a
6 different thing to drawing a conclusion on the balance of
7 probabilities about which witness is the more reliable.
8
9 At the end of the day, essentially, unless the question of
10 honesty or not is crucial to an issue in the case, you will
11 find that I will be concerning myself with, where there is
12 conflict with witnesses, who is the more reliable and what
13 the balance of probabilities is -- which, if I can give you
14 a tip for your final speeches, where you have a witness on
15 one side who seems a decent chap and a witness on the other
16 side who seems a decent chap, what the inherent
17 probabilities of the situation are.
18
19 MS. STEEL: Is it not difficult to judge on which witness is
20 more reliable if the evidence of one witness is not
21 challenged at all?
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No -- because I can see what in issue. It
24 does not help me a bit just to go through a morning of
25 formal challenges, when I know the matter is in issue
26 already.
27
28 Since we have started talking about it, we have gone away
29 from Mr. Sutcliffe's evidence, but I want him to stay there
30 for a moment, because there is something I want to ask you
31 about his evidence.
32
33 When you come to final speeches, where there is an issue
34 between an apparently honest witness on McDonald's side and
35 an apparently honest witness on your side, it is always
36 helpful to look for what you may want to argue is the key
37 to the conflict -- something which was pointed out to me in
38 my first months as a barrister: if you can see what the
39 key might be to the conflict, it very often points the way
40 to what is more likely.
41
42 If I can give an example: McDonald's have said that only
43 in rare circumstances are under-18s employed after 10 p.m.,
44 if they are women, or midnight if they are men. You have
45 called evidence that numbers of people under 18 are
46 employed after those hours. I do not know, you might
47 suggest to me that the key to that is that if McDonald's
48 employ a very large proportion of people who are under 18
49 and they need people to work after 10 or after midnight,
50 they are going to be put under some pressure to allow under
51 18 year olds to work after their hours.
52
53 The key to that is the situation they find themselves in,
54 with a need to have people working after 10 or after 12 and
55 a very large proportion of their workforce under 18. I am
56 not reaching a decision on it yet; I have not heard all the
57 argument on it. But that is an attempt to illustrate to
58 you what the key might be. Do you understand?
59
60 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
