Too Ka Man (杜家文) "Dishonest, Evasive, Recklessly Irresponsible and Wholly Unreliable" - Says Court - [2019] HKDC 971

Too Ka Man (杜家文) "Dishonest, Evasive, Recklessly Irresponsible and Wholly Unreliable" - Says Court - [2019] HKDC 971

CHAN CHAM PONG CEDRIC (陳湛邦) v TOO KA MAN (杜家文) & MANSON WATER AND ELECTRIC COMPANY LIMITED (文信水電裝修工程有限公司) - [2019] HKDC 971 - Date of Judgment - 26 July 2019

https://legalref.judiciary.hk/lrs/common/ju/ju_frame.jsp?DIS=123352&currpage=T

The Evidence of D1 (the 3rd Witness)

15.  The 3rd witness was D1.  He struck me as a dishonest, evasive, recklessly irresponsible and wholly unreliable witness.  I find the following non-exhaustive features in D1’s evidence wholly unacceptable: -

(1)  D1’s witness statement, dated 13 December 2017, was professionally prepared with the assistance of lawyers.  D1 signed a statement of truth verifying its contents as true.  During D1’s examination-in-chief, D1 corrected just one word in this witness statement and confirmed the rest of its contents as true.  When cross-examined, however, D1 changed his evidence and said 8 out of 32 paragraphs of this witness statement were wrong.  Of all these “inaccuracies”, the most serious one was D1’s false allegation that P had refused to grant Ds access to the Apartment.  That allegation was obviously false and flatly contradicted by the contemporaneous WhatsApp conversations which P produced.  Since D1 was himself a party to those WhatsApp conversations, and had a full opportunity to read them again before giving evidence, in my judgment D1 had given false evidence knowing the same to be false or at least not caring about its truth or falsity when he confirmed the contents of his witness statement as true without correcting this first.

(2)  D1 was shown the list of documents signed and filed by Ds’ lawyers on Ds’ behalf in August 2017, where only 9 items were disclosed by them in its Schedule 1 Part 1 as documents relevant to the issues in this action in the Peruvian Guano sense.  D1 was then asked why Ds had, via this list, declared that Ds did not have and never had in their possession, custody or power other obviously relevant documents such as copies of email messages, WhatsApp messages, other correspondence with the Consumer Council, etc., which Ds obviously had. D1 was also asked whether this was an attempt on Ds’ part to deliberately withhold and hide evidence perceived by Ds as adverse to their best interests in this case and to “blindfold” this Court into not seeing the whole picture. D1 alleged he had handed everything to his lawyers and never withheld anything.  In effect, D1 was alleging it was his lawyers’ fault.  To put this in context, save for a short period of time between 9 November 2018 and 3 December 2018, Ds were all along legally represented and Ds’ list of documents was professionally prepared by one team of lawyers (in August 2017) and reviewed by a second team of lawyers (after 3 December 2018). In my judgment, it would be unlikely for separate teams of lawyers to have jointly and/or successively withheld documents from this Court, knowing the same had been handed over by Ds to them.  On balance of probabilities, the more likely scenario must be that Ds never gave the other relevant documents to their lawyers, and that D1 was giving false evidence knowing the same to be false when he alleged he gave everything to his lawyers.

16.  By reason of the above, and as I shall elaborate at appropriate places below, in so far as D1’s evidence is self-serving or contradicted, I reject the same as false or unreliable.