Duke of Sussex & Others v ANL: thread 2

[bluegreygreen]

This is a continuation of the discussion on the previous thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5443044-duke-of-sussex-court-case-key-witness-statement-false?page=1

We are following the court case on the

😂😂😂😂 brilliant.
What no itemized invoices or note books, bank statements showing payments.....
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis....

Who are they calling next Walter Mitty?

😂 😂

book'em Danno 🏝️ 🏄‍♂️😂

What a reliable witness...

Seriously?

That's the level of evidence?

Hacked Off seem to be scraping the barrel with the "witnesses" they have dredged up

Press Gazette report https://archive.is/GgO4O

Given that people like Kylie. Epstein etc aren't actually part of this trial, I'm assuming it's the claimants trying to establish that the DM was in the habit of paying for illegally procured information.

I thought the judge had previously told them they couldn't use other people's cases to establish this, and had to make their own case?

Having said that, it sounds like ANL has been able to refute at least the Epstein one reasonably easily.

Guardian report https://archive.is/l1LPb

Sherborne seems to be trying to showhorn the Epstein references in to maximise publicity with irrelevant details

Telegraph report about Gavin Burrows:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f5bf1006f5022739

God what a shit show!

Thanks @CraftyGin

Archive link: https://archive.is/F1Gqi

So, Sherborne said 'the claimants had been put in an “invidious” position but had a right to know where the witness was in order to ensure justice was served and that he was taking part free from interference or coaching'.

I'm tempted to suggest he might be more likely to be free from interference or coaching away from Sherborne ...

As I understand it, the claimants are now treating Burrows' evidence as 'hearsay' evidence, isn't that correct?

So, they can't cross-examine him, but ANL can?

Now, Sherborne is saying that because he won't tell the lawyers where he is (I think he said he'll tell the judge) he should be blocked from giving evidence.

Please tell me if I've got this right ...

Another question: if he's blocked from giving evidence, does his (current) statement get thrown out as well, or does it stay as evidence?

Why does it matter if the lawyers know where he is?

I’d be interested to know this too.

Surely the claimants don’t have any right to know where a witness is residing, especially a witness that their own legal team have supposedly threatened.

This whole shit show trial comes across as Sherborne’s team being caught out, they were expecting a financial settlement from ANL, it wasn’t supposed to go all the way to trial.

It can't be this simple though, surely?

I can only read what is published and have no legal knowledge. Would a case this big be as simple as it is being presented, that there's no actual evidence? At a cost of £38(??) million?

Why would the plaintiff do that? There must be more to it, surely?

Sherborne is struggling now that he is losing control over (his own side's) witnesses. I think he will be hitting the tonight!

Personally I can't see why Burrows can't give evidence over video link (IIRC I thought I read that Elton was due to give evidence by video link?). As long as it's identifiably Burrows does it make a difference whether he's in Miami, Helsinki, Hull, Nuuk or a No. 25 bus?

The problem is that their "star witness" is now a hostile witness and the claimant side want to threaten "discuss things" with the witness. But I expect Sherborne is panicking if Burrows really does have evidence of the claimant side threats - is that not witness tampering?.

I don't know what happens is the respondents cannot X-examine the witness. I guess either it's thrown out or given low credibility.

So far the non-celebrity witnesses for the claimants seem very unimpressive - a mix of liars, fantasists and people with memory loss .... nobody has given any specifics yet!

Yes I have seen little to no concrete evidence in anything that I have read so far.

Maybe this will finally be the day that people like PH realise that “their truth” is not an acceptable substitute for “the truth”.

Extremely murky business if Sherborne is trying to force someone in hiding to give their location directly to the party from whom the threat came from … is he trying to twist the arm of the judge to say the witness is either thrown out or we’ll rub him out?!

Agree the courts allow evidence by video link - and especially if the witness says they feel harassed. In my experience there is evidence they are lying which is annoying but still allowed - so if Sherborne is successful in dismissing a witness he is a master manipulator.

Same here. Prince Harry got things off to a weak start but the witnesses that followed were progressively worse.

When Elton shows up perhaps he'll lead the court in a chorus of:-

It's sad, so sad
It's a sad, sad situation
And it's getting more and more absurd...

Hopefully Elton has a full blown tantrum, that would be the first and only authentic thing so far 😀.

😂