NOISY COURT WITNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20959, 24 August 1931, Page 7

NOISY COURT WITNESS.

SOUND FILM AS EVIDENCE. MAKING LEGAL HISTORY. — v ; , v ' INNOVATION IN MELBOURNE. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] SYDNEY, August 13. '.Legal history was made in Melbourne the other day when a local studio was transformed into a Court and the strangest witness ever put into a witness-box told it? story. Mr. Justice Lowe, who was hearing the case, as well as the barristers and solicitors engaged on both sides, attended, and as soon as they had taken their seats the lights were lowered and the witness began to give testimony.

The witness was a sound film recorded by Australian Sound Films as evidence in a Supreme Court action. The case was one in which a resident of Caulfield applied for an injunction restraining the proprietors of a dairy factory from carrying on their business in such a manneras to create a nuisanco. Damages of £IOOO were also sought.

The defence was a denial of the noises and the affidavits that had been filed showed that there was a direct conflict of evidence. In this impasse the plaintiff had recourse to science to help- her to prove her claims. She had a microphone set up on the window-sill of one of the bedrooms of her homo, and the recording of the noises and the photographing of the scene were carried out under expert direction. Suddenly the studio became a dairy yard, and the auditors heard the incongruously cheerful voices of the men at work at 2 a.m. unloading milk cans. The barking of an excited dog came through clearly; also the banging of .the milk cans. Then arose the strains of a singularly inappropriate song, when one of the early-morning workers bellowed, "Would You Like to Take a Walk," to the accompaniment of further banging of cans. The whirring of machinery and the running of a motor-lorry engine added to the noise.

The Judge ordered the film to be run through twice and after he had obtained some technical explanations from the operator be adjourned to the Court proper. There the operator was cross-examined.' He said that the recording was a faithful reproduction of the noises, except that excessive and explosive noises had to be cut down, lest they damage the delicate mechanism.

The admissibility of this form of evidence having been established, sound films may be expected to play an important part iu litigation in the future. The Judge was plainly interested in. th» novel form of evidence.