A witness in an intellectual property case started to give video evidence while driving a van, it has emerged.

Recorder Douglas Campbell QC, sitting in ASR Interiors Ltd v AWS Trading Ltd & Anor, explained that one of the witnesses called by the defendant, named as Dalwinder Singh, ‘appeared to be driving a van while dividing his attention between the road in front of him and the camera of a mobile device placed on the passenger seat’.

The judge immediately stopped last month’s hearing and directed the defendant to re-establish contact with Singh once he had stopped driving.

When Singh tried to give evidence a second time, it was from a busy office with distracting noise in the background. On the judge’s request, he found a quieter store room in the building, but Singh then had to disappear with the video link running while he ran back to the office to get his statement.

White van

The defendant was directed to re-establish contact with the witness once he had stopped driving

Source: iStock

The judge recorded that Singh did not have his exhibit to the witness statement to hand or know about a brochure he referred to in the statement.

At this point, the judge said, counsel for the defendant ‘wisely accepted that the process was not turning out to be a successful one’ and opted to rely on Singh’s statement only. The judge said this was ‘realistic’ but did not give Singh’s statement any weight.

The issue of witnesses giving evidence remotely has become more acute during lockdown and will continue to present challenges to the courts as hybrid hearings remain in the future.

Campbell said he did not mention the issue to find fault with anyone, but to illustrate the problems that can arise. 'Anyone who seeks, and obtains, an order permitting evidence to be given by video link would be well advised to think carefully about how the process of giving evidence will actually happen,’ he added.

‘At a bare minimum, when the time comes for the video link to be activated the witness should be in a room with all the case papers before him or her and with no distractions,' the judge said. 

 

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