''Ladd v Marshall''
954
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EWCA Civ 1 is an English
Court of Appeal judgment, which established the criteria for the Court to accept fresh evidence in a case on which a judgement has already been delivered.
Facts
Mr Marshall, the
defendant
In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case.
Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
, owned a piece of land in
Ashford, Middlesex
Ashford is a town almost wholly in the Borough of Spelthorne, Surrey, with a small area contained within the boundaries of the London Borough of Hounslow, approximately west-southwest of central London. Its name derives from a Ford (crossing), ...
, consisting of a
bungalow
A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas.
The first house in England that was classified as a b ...
attached to a pig holding. The bungalow had been built under a licence from the Local Authority, who had imposed a condition that the maximum price for which Marshall could sell the bungalow was approximately £1500. In 1952, despite the licence condition, Marshall offered the property for sale with an asking price of £3600, and Mr Ladd, the
plaintiff
A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the p ...
, expressed an interest in buying it.
[
]
Marshall told Ladd that the sale price was limited to £2500 (presumably £1500 for the bungalow and £1000 for the land, although Marshall did not make this explicit), and a document was drawn up for a sale at this price, with a £50 deposit. However, according to Ladd, he also paid Marshall an additional £1000 in cash to make up the full sale price. This cash was allegedly counted out "under the table" (as Lord Denning put it - indeed, according to Ladd's testimony, the cash was literally counted out on the carpet rather than on the table where the deposit was handed over) at the bungalow in the presence of Ladd, a friend of his (Mr Warren), Marshall, and Mrs Marshall, Marshall's wife. Marshall did not give Ladd a
receipt
A receipt (also known as a packing list, packing slip, packaging slip, (delivery) docket, shipping list, delivery list, bill of the parcel, manifest, or customer receipt) is a document acknowledging that a person has received money or propert ...
for the extra £1000.
[
On 11 June 1952, Marshall's solicitors informed Ladd that Marshall no longer wanted to proceed with the sale of the property.
]
First-instance trial
The sale having fallen through, Ladd was under no obligation to pay Marshall the "legitimate" price of £2500. However, he issued proceedings against Marshall to recover the £1000 that he claimed to have paid. Marshall denied that there was any such arrangement and that any cash (apart from the £50 deposit) had been handed over. At the trial, in addition to his own testimony, Ladd called Mr Warren and Mrs Marshall as witness
In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...
es.
Mrs Marshall was reluctant to give evidence against her husband - she would have been able to refuse to do so in a criminal trial
Criminal procedure is the adjudication process of the criminal law. While criminal procedure differs dramatically by jurisdiction, the process generally begins with a formal criminal charge with the person on trial either being free on bail ...
, but, in a civil trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, ...
, she had no such immunity
Immunity may refer to:
Medicine
* Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease
* ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press
Biology
* Immune system
Engineering
* Radiofrequence immunity desc ...
- and, although she confirmed that ''a'' transaction had taken place, she claimed not to remember any details of it whatsoever. Ladd's counsel did not apply for Mrs Marshall to be treated as a hostile witness
A hostile witness, also known as an adverse witness or an unfavorable witness, is a witness at trial whose testimony on direct examination is either openly antagonistic or appears to be contrary to the legal position of the party who called t ...
so that she could be cross-examined, and the first-instance judge (Glynn-Jones J), who did not accept the unsupported testimony of Ladd and Warren, dismissed the case.[
Ladd did not appeal against the judgment initially. However, in May 1954, Mr and Mrs Marshall were ]divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...
d, and Mrs Marshall contacted Ladd's solicitors to inform them that her earlier testimony had been false, and she was now prepared to state in court that the £1000 had been handed over. Ladd applied to the Court of Appeal for Glynn-Jones J's judgement to be overturned, and for Mrs Marshall's new evidence to be considered by the court.[
]
Judgment on appeal
The Court of Appeal, consisting of Denning LJ, Hodson LJ and Parker Parker may refer to:
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LJ, allowed Ladd's appeal to be heard, but refused to admit the testimony of Mrs Marshall. Lord Denning laid down the definitive rule for the admissibility of new evidence:
Mrs Marshall's new evidence failed the "apparently credible" test, as, according to Lord Denning, "a confessed liar cannot usually be accepted as being credible",[ and there was no satisfactory evidence that Mrs Marshall had been coerced by her husband to lie at the first-instance trial, and no other good reason for her doing so. Hodson and Parker LJJ agreed with Lord Denning on this issue, citing the earlier case of ''Brown v Dean'' ]910
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AC 373, where Lord Loreburn had stated the principle as: " ew evidencemust at least be such as is presumably to be believed, and if believed would be conclusive." Their Lordships considered that "conclusive", in Lord Loreburn's statement, was too strong a word; Lord Denning's formulation of the principle ("an important influence on the result") was adopted by the courts in all future cases.
The basic principle that guides all such decisions is expressed by the Legal Latin
A number of Latin terms are used in law, legal terminology and legal maxims. This is a partial list of these terms, which are wholly or substantially drawn from Latin.
__TOC__
Common law
Civil law
Ecclesiastical law
See als ...
maxim ''interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium'' - "It is in the interests of the state that there be an end to litigation".
Subsequent cases
The Civil Procedure Rules
The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) were introduced in 1997 as per the Civil Procedure Act 1997 by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee and are the rules of civil procedure used by the Court of Appeal, High Court of Justice, and County Courts in civil ...
(Rule 52.21 para 2b) state "Unless it orders otherwise, the appeal court will not receive evidence which was not before the lower court."
The grounds on which the Court will make such an order are still based on ''Ladd v Marshall''. In the case of ''Muscat v Health Professions Council'' 009 009 may refer to:
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EWCA Civ 1090, Smith LJ stated "The Ladd v Marshall principles were indeed at the heart of the exercise of discretion o admit new evidence"
See also
*E v Secretary of State for the Home Department
''E v Secretary of State for the Home Department'' was a landmark Court of Appeal case of 2004 which significantly developed the doctrine of ''error of fact'' as a distinct ground which was taken in conjunction with the question of new evidenc ...
(2004 appeal involving new evidence produced after the hearing but before the decision date)
Notes
{{English law types
United Kingdom administrative case law
Lord Denning cases
1954 in British law
Court of Appeal (England and Wales) cases
1954 in case law