G'day everybody and welcome to Lecture 3 in Laws 13010 Evidence and Proof. I'm Anthony Maranac. This week we're going to look at a topic called Methods of Proof. Methods of proof is a topic that I really wrestled with myself about whether to present this topic early in the course or whether to drop it back later in the course. And in the end I've decided that it probably works best up front so that you can get a picture straight away overall of what we're trying to do when we assemble evidence to form a case. What methods of proof is all about is how do you take various bits of evidence and actually structure them into a case. what can different types of evidence do to assist you to convince the judge or the jury that you and your client are right and you should prevail in the case different bits of evidence can be used different ways to prove different points Now of course one way I could teach this is to wait until I've taught you about all of the different types of evidence and all of the rules that apply to them and then teach you how to assemble them. The alternative and the method that I've chosen is to present you up front with a picture of what we're trying to accomplish. And hopefully then as we go through the more detailed rules they'll make a lot more sense because you have the context of what we're trying to do with them. So what we're going to look at... First up is a method for putting together a case. Then we're going to look at the difference between testimony, documentary and real evidence and what each of them can prove. We're going to look at the concepts of competence and compelability. We're going to look at observation, hearsay and opinion evidence and look at why hearsay and opinion evidence are generally weaker than observation evidence. We look at the different types of documentary evidence. We'll look at the third type of evidence generally called real evidence and the different types that that's broken down into and finally we'll revise some stuff that we talked about last week about judicial notice and formal admissions. So let's begin. How do you construct a case? How do you take a bunch of information that you've obtained either through your own research or through discussions that you've had with your client? and how do you put them together in a way that is going to be compelling to the judge and jury or even more importantly in a way that's going to be compelling to your opponents so that they think about settling rather than taking you into the courtroom. In my view there are seven questions that you must ask. The first question is what must I prove and to what standard? in other words you must know the elements of your cause of action very clearly it's no use going to great lengths to prove to the court things that don't actually matter in terms of constructing the cause of action that you're trying to put to the court the second thing is you must be very clear about the standard of proof that is required What I mean here is not just the simple stuff. Everyone can work out whether they're involved in a criminal case or a civil case. I want you to start thinking, particularly in civil terms, about that Brigginshaw standard so that you're asking yourself, how big is the thing that I'm trying to prove? How important is it? What level of proof is a judge or a jury likely to require in order to assume that I'm telling the truth, in order to assume that my client has got the right of it? Once you've worked out what you need to prove and what standard you need to meet, then you need to look at what information is available. What information have you got that can prove that those facts that you're relying on actually exist? Sometimes you're going to have information that is really juicy, photos that are really great, but they don't actually assist you to prove a particular fact that you need to prove in order to construct your cause of action. In that case, they're interesting but useless. You need to be looking for the information that is available that allows you to say to the court, here are the facts that I'm relying on and here is why you can believe that those facts exist. Third question to ask is whether the information is direct or indirect. What's the difference between the two? Well, let's imagine this is an example we'll come back to later in the course. Let's imagine somebody is accused of break and entry. So breaking into another person's home and stealing stuff from it and breaking back out again. Direct evidence would be the testimony of somebody who saw them break in there's no question about the offence being committed because somebody actually saw it going on they had a direct observation of the offence while it was being conducted indirect evidence might be pulling the thief up in their car as they're driving down the road finding that they've got a bunch of stolen stuff stashed in the back and there's broken glass in their hair all of that evidence gives you a pretty darn strong hint that they were the person just involved in a break and entry but none of it is direct none of it actually shows you that person in the commission of the crime Generally speaking, direct information is... Direct evidence is stronger than indirect evidence, but indirect evidence is very commonly used and can be very strong. So you need to know which types of evidence you're dealing with. Fourth, ask yourself, is any of the information that I've got clearly inadmissible? Is there anything here that I know was collected unlawfully? Or that I know is going to be inadmissible hearsay, which you'll learn more about in coming weeks. Is there any evidence here that I know the courts won't listen to? Because if that evidence is clearly inadmissible, you need to chuck it away and go looking instead for evidence that you reckon is going to be admissible. so that you can put that evidence in front of the court and make your case. Fifth question to ask, which evidence is most reliable? You see, you could take evidence into the court which you think is going to be great for proving your case to the judge or the jury and then find that the other side knocks that evidence over very quickly by showing that the evidence is not reliable. If you know the evidence is not reliable, you might need to corroborate it with other evidence that proves the same point. Sixth, once you've worked out which evidence is going to be reliable, you need to ask yourself which evidence has the highest probative value? Which evidence gives the knockout blow? Which is the strongest evidence that I can put that clearly makes the point that our facts are right and our opponents'facts are wrong? Remember last week we said that one evidential diamond is worth a thousand evidential dollar bills. Well probative value is that process of working out which bits of evidence are my evidential diamonds and which are just the dollar bills. And you want to put those evidential diamonds up front because they're going to win you the case. The final question you'll be asking is what form of evidence do I have? Am I going to be relying on testimony? Am I going to be relying on documents? Or am I going to be relying on real evidence? Because the different types of evidence will require a different approach in the court. Let's look at that question right now. Last week you will remember that I said testimony is the gold standard of evidence. Testimony is the evidence that everybody wants to bring before the court because the court regards it as the highest form of evidence. So what exactly is testimony? The classic definition is that testimony is evidence given viva voce about things detected with the witness's own five senses. Viva voce simply means with the voice or by the voice. So what it's saying is that evidence is given in a question and answer format. It's not given as a monologue speech. A monologue speech is the sort of thing that I'm doing right now. It's not given as a dialogue where two people simply have a chat and each of them has the opportunity to steer the conversation. Instead, it's given in a question and answer format. Witnesses can generally only talk about things they've detected with their own five senses. So things that they have seen, heard, smelt, touched or tasted. Anything that they haven't experienced directly themselves, witnesses generally can't give evidence about. We'll find later on in the course that because this is evidence law, there's always exceptions to the rule. But generally speaking... Testimony is evidence given about things detected with the witness's own five senses. I've pointed you on the PowerPoint slide to a case called the People in Ogden. This is a case from the United States of America in Illinois where a home invasion was taking place and the person who conducted the home invasion assaulted the man of the home as he opened the front door. And the assault was heard and the voice of the perpetrator was heard by the victim's wife. and the victim's wife identified the perpetrator by the sound of his voice, which was known to her. It was raised in court that perhaps her testimony shouldn't be accepted because at no time did she actually see the perpetrator of the offence committing the offence. And the court found, the court stated, that the witness can learn and know facts by and through the exercise of their perceptive faculties, that is their five senses, and such facts the witness may state. And that's still the law in... Queensland obviously because this is United States case it's not directly bonding on Queensland courts but the people in Ogden really has come to be the classic statement for the common law world about how oral testimony works so who can give oral testimony in order to give oral testimony you have to be regarded as competent to give oral testimony a person is competent if they are able to understand the nature of the oath that they have to give before giving testimony, and if they are able to understand the nature of their duty to tell the truth while giving testimony. You see, testimony is different. Testimony is different from a conversation that you might have with someone in the street. It's different to a conversation you might have with an investigating police officer. It's different to a conversation that you might have, even a very important conversation in a formal context, with anyone outside the courtroom. The reason for that is that our courts make a very important demand of witnesses that they tell, in the classic words, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If a witness can't understand that obligation, then they can't give evidence. Now, when it's suggested that a witness is unable to meet that standard it's for the judge to determine as a question of fact whether they meet the standard there are two classic cases in which witnesses can be held to be incompetent the first of those is when a witness is a child Now you will find people ask you what age a child has to be before they can give evidence. Quite often you will find people who will pluck a magic number out of the air and tell you that a child of 12 or a child of 14 is able to give evidence. In fact that's rubbish. The only question is whether the child is able to understand the nature of an oath and their duty to tell the truth. in most cases because a child hasn't yet reached the age of legal majority they won't actually be required to swear an oath before giving evidence but they are required to demonstrate to the judge that they understand that in court there is an important obligation upon them to tell the truth and that telling lies even white lies before the court is not allowed as long as a child is sufficiently mature in the opinion of the judge to understand and comply with that obligation, then they are competent to give evidence. There's no magic number. The second case revolves around people who have a mental illness or a mental disability. It would be very easy to say that certain people who suffered from certain illnesses were as a result of that illness incompetent to give evidence again though it doesn't work that way and the classic case of the crown and hill is that it's a nineteenth century case that makes this point beautifully what happened in the crown and hill was that hill the defendant was the supervisor of the infirmary in what was back in the 19th century known as a home for the insane. It was essentially a mental health institution. And he was assisted in his infirmary duties by one of the inmates of that institution. Hill was accused of murdering one of the patients in the infirmary and the only witness who could give any real evidence about the commission of the crime was the inmate who had worked for him. The inmate was almost certainly suffering from what we would now identify as schizophrenia. The way that he described his illness was that he was constantly surrounded by demons and spirits who spoke to him. constantly and on a daily basis. Having said that though, other than for his delusion about having spirits surrounding him, he was a perfectly rational person. He had a perfectly lucid understanding of the world around him. He had a perfectly good memory of events. The only thing that distinguished him from a person of normal mental competence was that he believed that he was surrounded by spirits who were talking to him. he was asked by the judge whether he could distinguish between his own thoughts and the thoughts that might be spoken to him by the spirits who he considered surrounded him and he said yes of course there's no problem i know when they're speaking to me and i know when i'm thinking things for myself the judge asked him whether he was prepared to make sure that the answers that he gave in court were only his own answers and not the answers that were suggested to him by the spirits that surrounded him and he said yes he was perfectly prepared to abide by that requirement and as a result this person who would probably have been mentally incompetent to face criminal charges was entitled to give evidence. It was unsworn evidence, but he was competent to give evidence because he understood the nature of the oath in the case. The second concept to understand after competence... Sorry, before we go on, competence is not only defined in the common law. There are statutory definitions of competence in section 9 of the Evidence Act in Queensland. A person is competent to give evidence if the person is able to give an intelligible account of events which he or she has observed or experienced. So if they are able to give an intelligible account, they are able to give evidence. They're able to give sworn evidence if first they can give an intelligible account of what they've observed or experienced, but in addition to that they can understand that giving evidence is a serious matter and they have an obligation to tell the truth that is over and above the ordinary duty to tell the truth. So in essence the definitions that we have in the Queensland Evidence Act really do reflect and slightly update the common law. If you're asked to give a definition of competence in an essay or an exam question, the definition that you should give is the one that comes out of Section 9 of the Queensland Evidence Act. So that's competence. Competence says these people are able to give evidence. Then we move on to the concept of compelability. If competence says who's allowed to give evidence, compelability says who must give evidence. You see, generally speaking you don't have a choice about whether to give evidence. If you know things and you are called upon to give evidence by the court, you have two choices. You give evidence or you go to jail. The general principle of compelability is that anyone who is competent is also compelable. So that's the starting point. Anyone who's competent to give evidence can be compelled to give evidence. Once upon a time, husbands and wives were not compelable against one another. So if a husband committed an offence and the wife could give evidence about the nature of that offence, the wife could not be compelled to give that evidence. If she chose to remain silent, she was entitled to remain silent. you will find people who still believe that that is the law it is no longer the law in queensland section seven of the evidence act is very clear about the fact that husbands and wives are now compelable against one another the only person who is competent but not compelable is the accused. You see, the accused is competent as a matter of definition because they are able to understand the nature of the oath and they are able to give an intelligible account of the things that they've seen or observed or experienced. But the accused is not competent to give evidence for the prosecution and the accused is not compelable to give evidence for anyone. Most of you will have heard the concept of the right to silence, that a person who is charged with a criminal offence cannot be compelled to say anything, not to investigators, not even to the court. Well it wouldn't be much of a right to silence if you could be compelled to give evidence in court. So the natural extension of the right to silence is that an accused person cannot be called upon by the prosecution to give evidence at all and they cannot be forced to give evidence. by anybody I have a free choice now compel ability is closely related to a concept called privilege which will talk about in more detail later in the course but let's have a brief look at it now if somebody has a privilege they can still be compelled to appear they can still be made to show up they can still be made to stand in the witness box and give evidence but there may be specific questions that they can refuse to answer for instance everyone i think would understand the privilege against self-incrimination so if you're not the person who's on trial if you're not the defendant and you're giving evidence and you're asked to give evidence which if you answered the question it would make it perfectly clear that you had committed a criminal offence you're entitled to refuse to answer that question on the basis that it could be incriminatory against you You'll hear in bad American courtroom dramas people talk about pleading the Fifth. Well, the Fifth Amendment in the United States is effectively a privilege against self-incrimination. In the British tradition of common law, we simply call it the privilege against self-incrimination. Client professional privilege is one that you will come to know very well when you do your professional conduct course. Basically as a solicitor or a barrister you cannot be called to give evidence of anything that your client has said to you in the course of preparing for litigation. And finally we have what's called parliamentary privilege which is a privilege that's existed since the late 17th century where people who speak in the parliament or people who address the parliament's committees cannot be held to account in the courts for the things that they say in the parliament and that's there to protect free speech in the parliament. So testimony evidence comes in a few different types and we're going to talk about three of them. Observation evidence. opinion evidence and hearsay evidence. Observation evidence is what we're all looking for. Observation evidence is those things which a witness has actually seen for themselves, actually heard for themselves, actually perceived with their own five senses. Observation evidence in the pure form is actually pretty rare because most of the time when we're giving any sort of a description of things that we've seen or heard or smelt, we're adding some level of opinion to enable people to interpret the observations that we've made. So, for instance, if we had a witness give evidence, I heard a loud bang outside. Now that's pure observation evidence because all they're doing is saying that they heard a loud bang. If we then say to them, what sort of noise was the bang? One witness might say it sounded like a gunshot. Another witness might say it sounded like a car door slamming. Another witness might say it sounded like somebody dropping something heavy. All of those things are still perfectly intelligible accounts of things that they've heard, but they're adding a layer of opinion over the top because they're actually interpreting the sound rather than just reporting it. So observation evidence is always strongest, but it's not unusual for observation evidence to have a level of opinion attached over the top. Once it gets to the point where you really are talking more about opinion than observation, then we enter the field of opinion evidence. Opinion evidence comes in several types. Basically we divide opinion evidence into non-expert opinion evidence and expert opinion evidence. Expert opinion evidence is an entirely different breed of evidence and we'll talk about that later in the course. What we really want to focus on here is non-expert opinion evidence, which is where witnesses do not limit themselves simply to talking about the things that they've seen or heard, but they start interpreting it over the top. Let me give you an example. Let's say we were appearing in a child-related proceeding in the family court. and we were asking a third-party witness about the parenting skills of the mother in the case. If we asked the witness, what was the house like when you went over? And the witness said, I saw that the dishes hadn't been done, there were clothes everywhere, and the house was generally in a state of disarray. That's pretty close to being observation evidence. Most of those are things that the witness could see for themselves. if however we asked the witness does the mother keep a clean house and the witness said oh no the place is terrible there's always mess everywhere and she really doesn't seem to put in very much effort at all that's pure opinion because the witness is not talking about things that they have observed the witness is just telling us what they reckon opinion evidence is a form of testimony which will usually be ruled inadmissible mainly because the court's not that much interested in the opinions of witnesses the court's perfectly capable of forming opinions for itself the example that i've given on the slide there the crown and whitby a police officer was able to observe that a driver appeared to be and smelt intoxicated even though there was never a breath test administered. So the police officer was able to say, this is what I observed about the driver. I observed that he was unable to stand up properly. I observed that he smelled of alcohol. I observed that he was behaving in a way that I as a police officer recognise is consistent with being intoxicated. He was allowed to give that evidence because it was sufficiently connected to actual observations that he was making. So there can be a fine line between observation and opinion evidence and we'll come to draw that fine line much more closely in future weeks. The third type of testimony is hearsay evidence. Hearsay evidence is if you're called as a witness and you're asked questions about things that you heard from someone else. hearsay evidence is usually not admissible you see if you get up on the stand and you tell me what katrina told you the obvious question is why don't we just call katrina Okay, if there's a third party outside the courtroom who has made a statement, the best way for that statement to be introduced in evidence is for that third party to be called, rather than playing what amounts to a game of Chinese whispers by having some intermediary come into the court and give evidence. Now again because this is evidence law it's all about the exceptions and there are a bunch of exceptions to this hearsay rule which we'll cover. We're actually going to do three weeks on hearsay in the coming weeks. At the moment all I really need you to understand is that hearsay evidence happens when the witness reports things that they've heard from other people rather than things they observe from themselves and as a general rule hearsay evidence is not admissible. So that's testimony. The second type of evidence we need to talk about is documentary evidence. We said last week that a document reflects a wide range of media. I've put a list of them there on the slide. Books, plans, maps, graphs, drawings, photographs, labels, pretty much anything you like. The case the ANA Commission and the Commonwealth was one that followed an aircraft crash and the cockpit voice recording, the black box as they're called, was considered to be a document because it met the definition. in that it was a device that contained data which could be reproduced for the benefit of the court. From a legal perspective, there are a few different types of documents that you need to know. The first one is business records. Business records are treated differently to other forms of document. They're usually much more easily admissible than most forms of document because much of our business-based litigation really does rely on having access to the records of a business and there are standards that apply to things like accountancy to make sure that those records are actually useful. Second is computer records. These days most of our records live in electronic form but they're going to have to be translated into a paper based form in order to be presented in the court. So we need to have a way of authenticating the fact that what's on the piece of paper in the court is actually the same as what's on the computer back in the office. Third is legal documents. Legal documents are not regarded as documents of evidence at all. And here I'm talking about things like copies of acts and copies of regulations that are being discussed in the court case. Obviously there's no need to treat those as documentary evidence. They're legal documents and documents of record. Finally, the substance of a cause of action is not usually regarded as being a document in the sense of evidence law. what i mean by the substance of a cause of action is if you have a case between two people who are arguing about whether or not a particular contract was completed it makes no sense to treat the contract as an item of evidence the contract is actually the substance of the cause of action The same if somebody is applying for probate of a will. It makes no sense to treat the will as a piece of evidence. The will is actually the substance of the cause of action. So the documentary rules of evidence don't tend to apply to those sorts of documents. The third type of evidence we need to look at is real evidence. Real evidence is actually a catch-all phrase for a bunch of quite different types of evidence. The thing that they have in common is that the court is able to directly feel or directly experience or touch or see the exhibits. the first type of real evidence is an exhibit. An exhibit is a physical object which is put in front of the court. So if a prosecution brings in a quantity of drugs, for instance, or if they bring in a murder weapon, or if they bring in items that were worn by a victim at the time of the offence, those would be exhibits. Exhibits have to be accompanied by testimony. so for instance if there's a murder weapon it might be necessary to have a police officer give evidence that this murder weapon or this weapon was obtained under such and such conditions in such and such a place and that it's been held by these people under these circumstances since the time it was found in fact that chain of custody will have to be established from the moment the item was located until the moment the item is put in the court And if there's any breaks in that chain of custody, the item will probably not be available to be used as evidence. Many of you will remember the case of Chappelle Corby, who was accused of smuggling drugs into Bali and who remains in prison in Bali for a period of seven years now and counting. One of the big problems with the way the Indonesian courts conducted the Corby case was that the boogie board bag that allegedly contained a large quantity of drugs was handled by many investigators from the time that it was allegedly located in the airport in Bali until the time it was brought before the courts in Indonesia. there was actually many opportunities for many people to interfere with that evidence and there was really no capacity for the court to be sure that what the court was seeing on the day of the case was the same as what was located on the day that mrs corby was accused of her offences so Real evidence in the form of an exhibit can actually be very tricky. Most of the time I think you're better off not to bother. Most of the time if you're going to have evidence from somebody who was there when the item was located, that person is going to be capable of giving a very strong description of what it is they saw, where it is they saw it, and there's really not a lot to be added by actually producing the item in the courtroom. Second type of real evidence is observation of a witness while they're actually in the courtroom. The demeanour and performance of a witness is something the court is entitled to observe and take account of. In some cases this will be as simple as trying to work out from somebody's facial gestures and somebody's manner of speech whether they're likely to be telling the truth or not. In other cases, the person is just saying what they think is right. You might notice that witnesses have a particular difficulty comprehending English language questions. That might be relevant to the veracity of the evidence that they give. In the case GIO and Bailey, the judge observed that the plaintiff in a motor vehicle case was having a great deal of difficulty getting up and down into and out of the witness box and he also observed her while she was sitting in the court room observed her moving around and observed that she was really quite frail and quite physically unable for a lady of her age and he took those observations into account on the question of damages personally that kind of worries me because for all that judge knows she might have run a marathon the week before and might have fallen down whilst getting out of the bath that morning before coming into court it's a pretty long stretch in the absence of testimony for a judge whose specialty after all is law and not medicine to see somebody walking around in the courtroom and make conclusions on that basis however it remains the case that the court is allowed to observe witnesses in the courtroom and the court is allowed to draw conclusions as a result. One thing to take away from this is that when you're preparing your witnesses to go into court, you need to talk to them about the fact that they are going to be under personal scrutiny while they're giving evidence. We'll talk more about this process of proofing evidence during our lectures on testimony. The third type of real evidence is a courtroom demonstration. Let me tell you upfront, I hate them. I think that courtroom demonstrations are generally speaking no more than cheap courtroom drama. The reason I think this is that it's almost impossible under most circumstances to completely replicate the circumstances in which an offence might have been committed in a courtroom. The slide that I've got there is from a real case in the United States of America. In the case, a wife was accused of stabbing her husband to death and she stabbed him no less than 193 times. Her defence was that she was a victim of domestic violence and that she was in a frenzy and simply continued to stab until she was sure he was dead. prosecution was arguing that there was no way her frenzy her immediate concern for her own welfare could have lasted for the amount of time that it would take to stab somebody one hundred and ninety three times Now that's evidence that could have simply been given or argument that could have simply been made but in order to make the point as graphically and theatrically as possible the prosecutors had the very bed upon which the crime was committed brought into the courtroom and assembled. They had an actor lie on the bed in the same position as the victim was tied in at the time of the offence and that's the prosecutor you can see there holding the knife. and she stabbed 193 times down onto her pretend victim whilst somebody timed it with a stopwatch. I hope that just thinking about that single example can show you why I'm so reluctant to consider that demonstrations can be useful in the courtroom. really the prosecutor sitting there stabbing one hundred and ninety three times at whatever pace tells us absolutely nothing about the amount of time that it might have taken somebody who's allegedly under severe emotional duress and in fear of their life to stab somebody else a hundred and ninety three times it's just nonsense however If a judge allows a courtroom demonstration to go ahead in the court, it is a form of real evidence and the judge and the jury are entitled to take notice of the results. The fourth type of real evidence is not actually regarded in Queensland as evidence at all, but it is regarded as evidence under the Uniform Evidence Act, so we'll talk about it now. This is what's called a view. A view is basically an excursion by the courtroom when the court decides to go and actually view the place where the action occurred. one of the more famous views in recent years was conducted when the court that was considering the liability of the backpacker murderer ivan malat went and visited the scene in the belangloi national forest where malat was alleged to have and later proven to have buried his victims So the judge and the lawyers and the jury and all of the associated court folk piled onto a bus and then went and wandered around in the area. Under Queensland law, a view is permitted, but a view is only permitted in order to enable the court to understand other evidence. It's not permitted as evidence in itself. Under the Uniform Evidence Act, a view has the same status as a courtroom demonstration it's just a courtroom demonstration that's not conducted in the courtroom you have to be really careful about views I can see how in some circumstances where the environment was simply unable to be properly communicated in the courtroom it might be useful to go and conduct a view however If the view becomes experimentation or recreation, then we have the same problems that we talked about with courtroom demonstrations. How can you be sure that what you're observing in the view is the same as what happened when the alleged offence occurred? Scott and Numerka Corporation, a case that I've cited there, is a really great example of how it can go wrong. This case surrounded a community facility which was used as a cinema and also as a dance hall and diner and a question about noise spill between those facilities. Halfway through the case the judge went and visited the facility on his own time just to hear what the noise spill was like. he came back into the court and said i've made all of these observations i realize they're not evidence but they help me to understand the evidence straight away there's the basis for your appeal because the judge was not there with the accused was not there with the lawyers was not there with the jury the judge was essentially off on a frolic and you can see the danger because the judge was not able to be guided by the advocates in what if anything should be taken away from the view So views are there, you can see how they might potentially be useful as a method of proof, but they really shouldn't be your first line and should only be something that's pulled out in a case where they're absolutely necessary. Finally, of course, you can construct your case using judicial notice and formal admissions. We talked about both of these last week and you will remember my terribly horrible picture of a cat in legal robes. Judicial notice says some facts are so notorious that you don't need to prove them at all. and formal admissions are facts that you agree with the other team are going to be agreed between you for the purpose of this trial so that is going to be no need for either side to have to actually go ahead and prove them So now you've got your tools, you've got your testimony, you've got your documents, you've got your real evidence, you've got judicial notice of facts that are not likely to be controversial and you've got formal admissions of facts that you're not going to be required to prove at all. You can now put them together using the sort of formal logic that I hope you looked at in week one. put them together to assemble each fact that's required to construct the cause of action using the eight-step process that we talked about at the start of this lecture. If you can do that, in fact it was a seven-step process and I need to learn to count. If you can do that, then what you're going to do is walk into the court with a well-structured well thought out argument which produces all of the facts that you need in order to apply the law and win the case supported by strong evidence that is going to allow the court to conclude that you're right and your opponents are wrong this evidence-gathering process this process of working out what you need to convince the court and how you're going to do it is where your case will be won and lost And this week when we look at the movies we're going to look at a case that really shows that up very strongly. The movie's one that I suspect many of you will have seen. The movie's called Erin Brockovich. It's a Julia Roberts movie based on a true story of Erin Brockovich who lived in California and was a paralegal, what the Americans call a law clerk. She found that a number of people in her local area were suffering from quite unusual rates of cancer and similar tumorous types of maladies. She eventually realised that it had to do with the chemical processing at a nearby plant. She led them in a class action that resulted in a massive payout of something in the order of 330 million US dollars. She is now regarded as something of a legal hero in the torts world, particularly in the United States of America. The excerpts that I'm suggesting that you watch, you can see the results of the exhaustive research that she put in to try and assemble different types of evidence to make sure that it was really compelling and obvious that she had a strong case. and what you see is the legal representatives for the company coming to try and negotiate their way out of trouble and you can see that their negotiating position is terrible they're coming in to offer twenty million dollars and Erin Brockovich is going to tell them go away and come back when you've added when you're adding more zeros to that number the only reason she can do that is that it's obvious to everybody in the room that the evidence that's going to be stacked up against the company is so strong that they can't ignore it. They can't pretend to themselves that they're going to win. The only question that they have to ask is how much they're going to lose by. I hope you enjoy looking at and thinking about that particular piece of Hollywood. I hope that you've enjoyed this particular lecture about methods of proof and that the material that we've talked about so far in the course is starting to come together for you. and I look forward to talking to you again for next week's lecture.