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Overworked witness statements under review

04 July 2019 / Abigail Rushton , Simon Heatley
Issue: 7847 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice
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The recent decision in Cathay may signal an increasingly strict approach by the courts to witness evidence, as Abigail Rushton & Simon Heatley report

  • Concern that witness statements have become a reconstruction of case documents rather than the recollection of the witnesses.
  • Undesirable risk that a statement contains detailed evidence on the documents that a witness would not be capable of giving at trial.

Increasingly, the judiciary has expressed concern about lengthy, complex, over-worked witness statements. This has led to calls for reform and heightened scrutiny being placed upon witness statements by the courts, as illustrated most recently in Cathay Pacific Airlines Ltd v Lufthansa Technik AG [2019] EWHC 715.

The case for reform has grown from concerns that witness statements are more a product of lawyers than the actual evidence of the witnesses. This raises fundamental questions about the place and purpose of witness statements.

The point of a witness statement is to provide evidence, in the witness’s own words, about specific issues of fact. Introduced as a measure

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