What is the test for credibility in a trial judge’s assessment of credibility?
Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
The following excerpt is from Rich v. Bromley Estate, 2013 NLCA 24 (CanLII):
While an appellate court will usually give great deference to a trial judge’s assessments of credibility, deference will not necessarily be warranted if the evidentiary and analytical basis for those credibility findings are not supportable or disclose palpable and overriding error. As noted in Housen v. Nikolaisen, “[I]t is open to an appellate court to find that an inference of fact made by a trial judge is clearly wrong” (per Major and Iacobucci JJ at paragraph 22). If the evidentiary and analytical base for the inference is lacking, the resulting inference will be “clearly wrong”.
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