Can someone help and point me in direction of any caselaw dealing with claimants evidence being discounted out of hand by the Statement of Reasons.
The chairman's comments were quite damning and all but calls her a liar. What galls is that despite being nervous on the day she gave good answers and I'm lost for the stance he's taken. I'm off to Commissioners but can't find anything on the Commissioners site.

Any help would be muck appreciated

CIB14722/96 is fairly persuasive in terms of the tribunal having to take the appellant's oral evidence as "medical evidence" in the absence of any other med evidence (except of course the MS exam). The real issue appears to be around whether or not the tribunal in this case considered the evidence your client gave....your consternation at the trib's reasoning appears to support the view that such reasoning could indeed be irrational. The trib has to justify why the evidence of your client was dismissed (though I doubt they will admit dismissal of the evidence, more likely a considered view of it - unless your lucky .....

I had one only last month where the client's evidence was dismissed as:-

"subjective and inevitably biased in favour of the claimant himself"
(!!!!??)

The word inevitable in that statement meant we went for (and got) and immediate set aside (arguing a predisposition of bias). A new trib was set up the following week and our client walked it.

Don't know if this relates to your own case...but the wording of the Chair's reasons indicaed either total bias or exteremely lazy rationale.

Have a look at R(SB) 33/85 which deals with uncorroborated evidence from the appellant. Its on the rightsnet site at:

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/33_85.pdf

David

Thanks to Dave and Pete. I've downed the copy of R(SB)33/85 but I'm having trouble with CIB 14722/96. Someone suggested it might be CDLA but there,s no trace on the Commissioners site using either prefixes. Could anyone help out.
Fax is 01642 444341
Tony Wright

the text of 14722 is reproduced in the old rightsnet forum @ http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forum/disability/999.html

Thanks Shawn