This blog revisits the law relating to credibility.
On November 4.11 disinherited.com blogged ” The Importance of Credibility“.That is an understatement and then some.The following observations of O’Hallaran J.A. in Faryna v. Chorny (1951), [1952] 2 D.L.R. 354 (B.C. C.A.) 354 at pp. 356-357 are often cited when the issue of credibility is before the Court:On reflection it becomes almost axiomatic that the appearance of telling the truth is but one of the elements that enter into the credibility of the evidence of a witness.
Opportunities for knowledge, powers of observation, judgment and memory, ability to describe clearly what he has seen and heard, as well as other factors, combine to produce what is called credibility…
The credibility of interested witnesses, particularly in cases of conflict of evidence, cannot be gauged solely by the test of whether the personal demeanour of the particular witness carried conviction of the truth.
The test must reasonably subject his story to an examination of its consistency with the probabilities that surround the currently existing conditions.
In short, the real test of the trust of the story of a witness in such a case must be its harmony with the preponderance of the probabilities which a practical and informed person would readily recognize as reasonable in that place and in those conditions. “
If your witnesses have no credibility, your case has no credibility, and the best counsel in the world will not win the case.
Is it believable?
