Yeung Lai Hung v. Ng Bing t/a Sun Fat Restaurant

HCPI106/2001

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

PERSONAL INJURIES ACTION NO. 106 OF 2001

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R U L I N G

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1. I am not going to allow you to ask her any questions about any discussions she may have had in the restaurant. That is a matter which simply has not been at all foreshadowed in the statements, and, really, more effort should have been made on the part of the Plaintiff's solicitors, once they got the original rebuff, to at least try and arrange an appointment at her convenience to go and see her in her office to take a full statement from her. That could have been done, and that simply has not been done. They accepted what she had to say at face value.

2. So where insufficient effort has been made, this is an attempt now to cover a very important area of the issues that are before the court, and I'm not going to allow it to come out in this way.

3. I am going to allow questions about the circumstances of the departure or the cessation of the Plaintiff's employment. That, perhaps, I can well see, is something administrative within the office organisation of the Plaintiff's employers and, subject to any other inquiries that the defendants may wish to make as a result of the answers, I do not think that would cause them the same sort of injustice that would be caused if they are completely caught by surprise by matters which should have been served at a very early stage when witness statements were exchanged.

4. That is my ruling.