A class of case that becomes very familiar arises out of the sale of a small business. A fried-fish shop is regarded by an enterprising widow who does not possess one as a mine of untold gold. She purchases one at a price above its value, fails from want of knowledge to conduct it successfully, and then brings an action for fraudulent misrepresentation against the seller. Of course, there are cases of fraud and misrepresentation; but, as a rule, there is nothing more than the natural optimistic statements of a seller followed by incompetence of the purchaser and the disgust of old customers. In a case of this sort, in which up to a point it was difficult to know where the truth lay, owing to the vague nature of the evidence, a graphic butcher gave a convincing account of the reason of the failure of the new management. He had come down to the Court in the interests of justice, leaving the abattoir—or as he called it “habbitoyre”—on his busiest morning.
“Yer see,” he said, “I knew the old shop well. I was in the ’abit of takin’ in a crowd of my pals on Saturday neet. So when the old Missus gave it up, I promised to give it a try wi’ the new Missus. Well, I went in twice, an’ there wor no sort o’ choice at all. There worn’t no penny fish, what there wor, wor ’a-penny fish, and bad at that, an’ the chips wor putty.”
It was obvious that the Plaintiff had started on a career for which Nature did not intend her, and that the cause of the failure of the business was not the fraud of the Defendant, but the culinary incompetence of the Plaintiff.
It is amazing how, apart altogether from perjury, two witnesses will give entirely different accounts of the same matter. No doubt there is a great deal of reckless evidence given and some perjury committed, but a great deal of the contradictory swearing arises from “natural causes,” as it were. A man is very ready to take sides, and discusses the facts of a case with his friend until he remembers more than he ever saw. In “running down” cases, where the witnesses are often independent folk and give their own evidence their own way, widely different testimony is given about the same event. One curious circumstance I have noticed in “running down” cases is that a large percentage of witnesses give evidence against the vehicle coming towards them. That is to say, if a man is walking along, and a brougham is in front of him and going the same way as he is, and a cab coming in the opposite direction collides with the brougham, I should expect that man to give evidence against the cab. I suppose the reason of that is that to a man so situated the brougham appears stationary and the cab aggressively dangerous, but whatever the reason may be the fact is very noticeable.
On the whole the uneducated man in the street is a better witness of outdoor facts than the clerk or warehouseman. The outdoor workers have, I fancy, a more retentive memory for things seen, and are more observant than the indoor workers. They do not want to refresh their memory with notes.
A story is told of a blacksmith who came to the farriery classes held by the Manchester Education authorities. The clerk in charge gave him a notebook and a pencil.
“Wot’s this ’ere for?” asks the blacksmith.
“To take notes,” replied the clerk.
“Notes? Wot sort o’ notes?”