What is the test for assessing the credibility of a witness?
Ontario, Canada
The following excerpt is from Cummings v Quantum Automotive Group Inc., 2017 ONSC 1785 (CanLII):
I adopt the following statement made in Faryna v. Chorny, [1952] 2 D.L.R. 352, at 357, (B.C.C.A.) about assessing the credibility of a witness: The credibility of interested witnesses, particularly in cases of conflict of interest, cannot be gauged solely by the test of whether the personal demeanour of the particular witness carried conviction of the truth. The test must reasonably subject his story to an examination of its consistency with the probabilities that surround the currently existing conditions. In short, the real test of the truth of the story of a witness in such a case must be its harmony with the preponderance of the probabilities which a practical and informed person would readily recognize as reasonable in that place and in those conditions.
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