Directory_and_Chronicle_1910 — Page 353

896

Alteration of affidavit.

Affidavits made ont of the

jurisdictiou and by foreigners.

Rules fər using affidavits.

Documentary ⚫vidence.

RULES OF SUPREME COURT

(8.) An affidavit shall not be admitted if it is proved that it has been sworn before a person on whose behalf it is offered, or before his legal practitioner, or before a partner or clerk of his legal practitioner.

(9.) An affidavit may be used, notwithstanding any defect in form, if it is proved that it has been sworn before a person duly authorized, and that the form thereof and that of the attestation thereto are in accordance with the law and custom of the place where it has been

sworn.

(10.) A defective or erroneous affidavit may be amended and re-sworn, by leave of the Court in which it is to be used.

(11.) The Court may, if it thinks fit, for reasons recorded in the Minutes, admit an affidavit in evidence, although it is shown that the party against whom the affidavit is offered in evidence had no oppor- tunity of cross-examining the person making the affidavit.

(12.) No affidavit or other document which is blotted so as to obliterate any words, and which is illegibly written or so altered as to cause it to be illegible, nor any affidavit in which there is any inter- lineation (unless the person before whom the same is sworn shall have duly initialled such interlineation), nor any affidavit in which there is a knife erasure (unless the person before whom such affidavit is sworn shall have rewritten and initialled in the margin the words or figures appearing to be written on the erasure), nor any affidavit or other document which is so imperfect upon the face or by reason of having blanks thereon that it cannot easily be read or understood, shall be filed or used in any action or proceeding, unless the Court shall otherwise order.

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17. (1.) The officer before whom an affidavit is sworn shall not allow an affidavit, when sworn, to be altered in any manner without being re-sworn.

(2.) If the jurat has been added and signed, he shall add a new jurat on the affidavit being re-sworn; and in the new jurat he shall mention the alteration.

(3.) He may refuse to allow the affidavit to be re-sworn, and may require a fresh affidavit.

18. An affidavit sworn before a Consular officer of His Majesty authorized to take affidavits in any country, or before a Judge or other person in the United Kingdom or in a British possession authorized to take affidavits, or before a Mayor or other Magistrate in a foreign country authorized to administer an oath, or in the case of a foreigner in China or Corea before his own proper Consular authority, may be used in the Court, subject to the rules of evidence.

19.-(1.) Before any affidavit is used it shall be filed in the office of the Registrar, but the Court may make an order in an urgent case, upon the undertaking of the applicant to file any affidavit sworn before the making of the order, provided that the order be not issued until after the affidavit has been filed.

(2.) The original affidavit or an office copy shall alone be recognized for any purpose in the Court.

20. In a civil case-

(1.) Every document offered as evidence, and not objected to, shall be put in and read, or taken as read by consent.

(2.) Every document put in evidence shall be marked by the Court at the time, and shall be retained by the Court during the hearing and returned to the party who put it in, or from whose custody it came, immediately after the judgment, unles it is impounded by order of

the Court.