He was her "man on the Clapham omnibus", who could channel the views of ordinary folk.
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The phrase "layman's terms" is often used to refer to terms that apply to the everyday person, as can the term "layman" or "layperson" itself. In English law, the phrase "the man on the Clapham omnibus" is sometimes used to describe a hypothetical person who is reasonably educated and intelligent but has no special expertise in a specific business or profession.
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The standard of "the man on the Clapham omnibus" is not applied in all cases, since this might lead to unfairness. There are defendants for whom this standard is much too low and would exonerate an obvious wrongdoing. In other cases, the standard may be seen as too demanding of the defendant in the circumstances. The most common examples are the cases of specialist defendants, inexperienced defendants and child defendants.
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The test of an ordinary average person would not be appropriate for defendants that profess or hold themselves out as professing a certain skill. The "man on the Clapham omnibus" does not have that skill and the conduct expected from a skilled professional is not the same as could be expected of an ordinary man in the same circumstances.See Bolam v. Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 2 All ER 118 The general standard applied to professionals is therefore that of a "reasonable professional", e.g.
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The man on the Bondi tram is a fictional legal character used in civil law in New South Wales, Australia, representing an ordinary person.. Jurors, for example, have been directed to consider what the man on the Bondi tram would think of whether a statement is defamatory. The phrase borrows from the English formulation of the 'man on the Clapham omnibus', who personifies an average, reasonable person. It is comparable to the phrase 'the man in the street'. Government trams were discontinued in Sydney in the 1960s, to be replaced by buses.
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An historical Brixton to Clapham horse-drawn bus on display at London Bus Museum. The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical ordinary and reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted as a reasonable person would – for example, in a civil action for negligence. The character is a reasonably educated, intelligent but nondescript person, against whom the defendant's conduct can be measured. The term was introduced into English law during the Victorian era, and is still an important concept in British law.
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In the early 20th century, Clapham was seen as an ordinary commuter suburb, often cited as representing ordinary people: hence the familiar "man on the Clapham omnibus". By the 1980s, the area had undergone a further transformation, becoming the centre for the gentrification of most of the surrounding area. Clapham's relative proximity to traditionally expensive areas of central London led to an increase in the number of middle-class people living in Clapham. Today the area is generally an affluent place, although many of its professional residents live relatively close to significant pockets of social housing.
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As a result, the 'Ghosh test', which the jury was required to consider before reaching a verdict on dishonesty: #Was the act one that an ordinary decent person (normally considered to be the ubiquitous 'man on the Clapham omnibus') would consider to be dishonest (the objective test)? If so: #Must the accused have realised that what he was doing was, by those standards, dishonest (the subjective test)? [This part of the test was overruled by the Supreme Court in the case of Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords [2017] UKSC 67] Note that it was not essential for a person to admit that they acted in a way that they knew to be dishonest; it was probably enough that they knew others would think their behaviour was dishonest, or that they thought that what they were doing was wrong.
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During the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial, it became evident that the court needed to identify what was an "objective historian" in the same vein as the reasonable person, and reminiscent of the standard traditionally used in English law of "the man on the Clapham omnibus". This was necessary so that there would be a legal bench mark to compare and contrast the scholarship of an objective historian against the illegitimate methods employed by David Irving, as before the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial, there was no legal precedent for what constituted an objective historian. Justice Gray leant heavily on the research of one of the expert witnesses, Richard J. Evans, who compared illegitimate distortion of the historical record practice by holocaust deniers with established historical methodologies. By summarizing Gray's judgement, in an article published in the Yale Law Journal, Wendie E. Schneider distils these seven points for what he meant by an objective historian: Schneider uses the concept of the "objective historian" to suggest that this could be an aid in assessing what makes an historian suitable as an expert witnesses under the Daubert standard in the United States.
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