Originally Posted by keel beam
The court will deal with facts and facts only. No speculation, just pure facts.
I think this shows you don't really have a firm grasp of what happens in court.
The law is not black and white, no matter what Bassa might try and say to simplify it down for their members. "You can't get sacked"etc.
If it was just about black and white facts, they would be presented, the Judge would look up the answer in the big book of law, and the whole thing would take about 10mins.
How many times a week to you read about decisions in court that are not like this? Decisions that are made, unmade, overturned, revisited by higher courts etc. If the law was black and white, you or I would be up there earning £500,000 a year as a QC just looking up the answers. In truth the law is full of infinite shades of grey, open to all sorts of interpretations, and full of lovely woolly terms like 'reasonable' 'as far as practicable' 'to the best of their ability' and so on. Just look at the Iraq enquiry, half of it would be over in about 10mins! "Did res 1441 allow for legal military action against Iraq ... Hmm ... Its on page 1852 ... Ah, here it is. No it doesn't. Thanks for coming everyone"
So, no, the judge might not "speculate", but the QCs on each side sure as hell will, because this is going to come down to interpretation and intent and all sorts of lovely subjective areas. The real world is not as simple as Liz Malone, or her newsletters.