CODE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE.
No. 3 of 1901.
1195
341.—(1) If a witness is asked any question relating to a matter not relevant to the cause, except in so far as it affects the credit of the witness by injuring his character, the court shall decide whether or not the witness shall be compelled to answer it, and may, if it thinks fit, warn the witness that he is not obliged to answer it.
(2) No such question shall be asked unless the person asking it has reasonable grounds for believing that the imputation which it conveys is well founded.
(3) The court may forbid any question or inquiry which it regards as indecent or scandalous, although such question or inquiry may have some bearing on the questions before the court, unless it relates to facts in issue or to matters necessary to be known in order to determine whether or not the facts in issue existed.
(4) The court shall forbid any question to a witness which appears to it to be intended to insult or annoy, or which, though proper in itself, appears to the court to be needlessly offensive in form.
342. Where any person who might give evidence in any cause is dead, or insane, or unavoidably absent at the time when his evidence might be taken, or, for any reason considered sufficient by the court, cannot appear to give evidence in the cause, the court may, if it thinks fit, receive proof of any evidence given by him in any former judicial proceeding: Provided that the subject-matter of such former judicial proceeding was substantially the same as that of the existing cause, and that the parties to the existing cause were parties to it or bound by it, and in it had cross-examined, or had an opportunity of cross-examining, the witness of whose evidence proof is so to be given.
H. K. Code, s. 58.
343. All evidence taken at the trial of any cause may be used in any subsequent proceedings in the same cause.
O. 37, r. 25.
344. The provisions of Chapters XII and XIII shall, with the necessary modifications, apply in respect of petition or matter and in respect of the hearing thereof.