A
C
D
E
G.
H
L
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N
0
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0
R
U
servi cili
spoke to him saying that he must obey Ir. Tidey. No detail ves given of the nature of the circumstances when this was said, no description which would enable a jury to form the opinion that there was in the occasion itself something of exceptional significance which would permit them to attach to such a phrase, if it was used, a sinister connotation. It is some measure of his eagerness of the plaintiff's eagerness to -convert suspicion into fact that he could tender this as proof positive of complicity, in the enormities which he has described. Then there was the statement of his wife that when she went to see the defendant and asked him what had happened and what was wrong about her husband, he replied to the effect that the plaintiff should learn to please his superior officers. If any such phrase was spoken I have no doubt that it could have been understood in a sinister serise, but without further, it is obviously equally susceptible of a perfectly innocent connotation and in the context of an encounter which must have been both heated and unpleasant for both perties, if such a phrase vas used, it could scarcely be relied upon as bearing the sense that she patently ascribed to it.
In the upshot I have been able to find nothing which could be diguified with the name of evidence to bring home to the defendant anything touching upon his conduct to support the imputation of nalice against the plaintiff even if it be assumed that the greater part of what the plaintiff said of Mr. Tidey and the rest were true. hat the plaintiff
has put before the court amounts to an embracing web of closely intervoven suspicions attached to a handful of facts of doubtful weight and relevance although susceptible of an adverse interpretation. The plaintiff in his address upon the defence submission yesterday made it all too plain that in approaching this case the mode of his logic is cast in a proposition of the following form: "The defendant was the cause of my reversion. All police officers, particularly highly ranking police officers, are corrupt, therefore the defendunt corruptly caused my reversion." It is difficult to doubt the sincerity of this belief although to some ninds it will be difficult also to understand it given the nature of the evidence said to support it as regards the defendent. Eat whatever is to be said about that, this belief however passionately held will not pass for proof in a court of law. Indeed if one takes the first term of the proposition I have just enunciated and if one looks at the evidence at its face value, then bearing in mind the stress laid by the plaintiff on the importance of the "choating" inquiry, even that first step is contredicted by the evidence because the first alleged libel document (Exhibit D.15) which recommends the plaintiff's reversion makes it clear that the recommendation is based on factors reny times previously referred to in earlier reports and minutes · which are in no way connected with the suspicion of cheating. Moreover there is on record (see Minutes 2 and 3 in Exhibit P.9) an earlier ruling or minute by the Assistant Commissioner of Police specifically stating that this must not be taken into account in assessing the plaintiff.
From the outset of this trial I have become more and more uneasily aware that the nature of the forum and its proceduros vere wholly unsuited to the kind of inquiry which the plaintiff intended to press. He has given the appearance of totally misunderstanding the nature of the adversory system of adjudication. He has sought to use the court for an end for which it is not intended a sounding board for powerfully felt grievances not supported by solid proof. And the melancholy result has been that his cause, if it has a core of justification at all, has suffered a reverse and at the same time the procedure of the court has suffered too. It is not an uncorron result of using an inappropriate implement for a heavy task that the implement becomes strained in the use
:
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
0
P
Q
R
S
T
S.C. 224
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