Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Out of Court Statements to the OCL / Section 30

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Out of Court Statements to the OCL / Section 30

    Hi All,

    Have a Section 30 report or OCL report that contains out of court statements made by 3rd party witnesses that are not going to testify at trial?

    This is how to deal with it!

    George v. Nguyen, 2017 ONCJ 161 (CanLII)
    Date: 2017-03-01
    Docket: Halton 461/13
    Citation: George v. Nguyen, 2017 ONCJ 161 (CanLII)
    http://canlii.ca/t/h1rwv

    The justice in this matter did an excellent review on law on the issues and came to this conclusion:

    [21] In this case, the OCL report contains statements made by a number of people who were not called by either party to give evidence at the trial. The father served and filed a statement of dispute wherein he challenged the reliability of the out of court statements made to the clinician by Ms. McBurnie, Ms. Ruth Rogers, Amber Van Beek, Dr. Ghali, and Robin from Dr. Ghali’s office. Of these, the following people did not give evidence at trial:

    (a) “Robin” from Dr. Ghali’s office;
    (b) Ruth Rogers;
    (c) Robin Mirza.

    [22] In her closing submissions, the mother’s counsel pointed out that none of these three individuals testified at trial. She relies on the out of court statements made to the OCL clinician by each of these people. Given the father’s challenge, if the mother wished to rely on these out of court statements, she was obliged to either call them as her witnesses or prove necessity and reliability. She did neither of these things.

    [23] Therefore, I find that all out of court statements made by these three individuals are inadmissible hearsay for this trial. All other out of court statements made by people, including the child, to the OCL clinician by people who did not testify and whose statements were not challenged by the father in his statement of dispute, are admitted as if these statements are original evidence.
    Hearsay is a huge issue in OCL and Section 30 reports. If you are going to have them talk to someone be prepared to call them as witnesses at trial!

    Good Luck!
    Tayken
Our Divorce Forums
Forums dedicated to helping people all across Canada get through the separation and divorce process, with discussions about legal issues, parenting issues, financial issues and more.
Working...
X