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LPC Law Notes Civil Litigation Notes

Evidence Notes

Updated Evidence Notes

Civil Litigation Notes

Civil Litigation

Approximately 418 pages

A collection of the best LPC Civil Litigation notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".

In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of Civil Lit notes available in the UK this year. This collection of notes is fully updated ...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Civil Litigation Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

EVIDENCE

Factual Evidence

The general principle is that courts should only accept evidence from witnesses with first-hand
knowledge of the facts. Witnesses should attend court and give live oral testimony.

Witnesses
CPR 32.4 Witness statements of the evidence a party intends to rely on at trial must be served.
CPR 32.10 If the witness statements are not served, the evidence cannot be relied upon except with the permission of the court and this will only be granted in exceptional circumstances.
CPR 32.5(1) If a party has served a witness statement of the evidence he wishes to rely at trial, he must call the witness to give oral evidence unless the court orders otherwise or he puts the statement in as hearsay evidence.
CPR 32.5(3) A witness can expand on court on his witness statement with the court’s permission.
CPR 32.9

Witness Summary

  • If a witness is uncooperative or cannot be traced, it is possible, with the court’s permission, to serve a witness summary instead of a witness statement.

  • A witness summary is basically just that; a summary of what that witness would have said if a statement had been obtained.

CPR 34.2

Witness Summons

  • A party can follow the procedure set down in Part 34 to issue a witness summons, requiring a witness to attend court to give oral evidence.

  • Risky –that party may have no prior knowledge of what the witness will say in court.

Hearsay Evidence – Civil Evidence Act 1995
S.1(2) CEA 1995 Hearsay = a statement made otherwise than by a person while giving oral evidence in the proceedings which is tendered as evidence of the matters stated.’
S.1 CEA 1995 Hearsay evidence admissible
S.2 CEA 1995 Notice required for hearsay evidence
S.4 CEA 1995 In estimating the weight (if any) to be given to hearsay evidence in civil proceedings the court shall have regard to any circumstances from which any inference can reasonably be drawn as to the reliability or otherwise of the evidence.
CPR 33.2 & 3 Notice procedure to rely on hearsay evidence

Opinion Evidence

The general rule is that opinion...

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