Annexure: Extract from Field v Field (New South Wales Court of Appeal, 21 October 1981), per Reynolds JA, Hope and Glass JJA agreeing
"I would commence by giving consideration to the question of what facts were within the appellant's knowledge on the date specified by the respondents, 14th February, 1980. In this case no question arises as to the facts which it is alleged ought to have been known so it is simply a question of them being known.
The use of the expressions 'know the fact' and 'knowing those facts' occasion some difficulty. Obviously there are gradations of knowledge. Some facts are plainly known to a person and cause no problem. If the physical happenings constituting the occurrence were seen and remembered by the plaintiff there is no difficulty in saying he knows those facts. If his injury causes him pain and disability he, of course, knows that. If search discloses the ownership of a motor vehicle of a particular registered number, it is not difficult to say he knows the fact of ownership. However, when the fact is only capable of establishment by the acceptance of qualified expert opinion the matter is not at all clear.
It cannot be that the material facts in general and those enumerated in s 57(1)(b) are confined to those matters which are known by the direct observation of the person whose means of knowledge is in question and that these facts alone are to be interpreted, explained or amplified by "appropriate advice". The nature of the material facts included in the definition precludes this view.
When the knowledge alleged depends upon the statements of others and in particular the statement of opinion of others, some test needs to be applied in order to answer the question whether it can fairly be said that he knew it because he was told it. The submission that the mere expression of an opinion that a fact exists means that the person to whom it is communicated knows that fact is untenable. It cannot rationally accommodate the case where diametrically opposed opinions are offered and accords a premium value to that opinion which is fortuitously first communicated.
It seems to me that at one end of the scale a statement may emanate from such a source and in such circumstances that the person to whom it is communicated can fairly be said to know the fact asserted in the statement. The example of the result of a search as to ownership of the motor vehicle, which I have cited earlier, would seem to fall into such a category. Similarly, I would think that an unqualified opinion by an appropriate medical specialist that there was a relationship between a physical disability and an accident could, in general, result in the plaintiff knowing that there was such a relationship. In these cases, the plaintiff knows one thing for certain, that the maker of the statement has asserted the fact but he does not, in the same sense, know the fact asserted.
In my view, the appropriate test in such cases is that suggested in Vines v Djordjevitch 91 CLR 512 at 522, ie whether the statement made in the circumstances would convey to a reasonable man that the fact exists.
In my opinion, the word 'know' when used in s 57(1)(e) is used in an ordinary sense and as the High Court said in the case just referred to, 'without any intention that it should be analysed or refined upon'."