Diana coroner in ruling appeal

Earlier this week, two High Court judges backed a legal challenge to coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker's decision to have statements from the photographers - who are refusing to give evidence in person and be cross-examined - read to the jury.

The ruling placed a question mark over if and how evidence from the paparazzi, who pursued Diana on the night of her death, could be heard.

Allowing an application for judicial review by lawyers acting for the parents of crash driver Henri Paul, the judges overturned the coroner's decision simply to read the statements of absent witnesses to the jury.

The judges said the hearsay evidence had to be admitted by calling a witness - for instance, someone who had taken down the statement or into whose hands it had been delivered.

The coroner has no power to force foreign witnesses to give evidence and the French government has refused to compel the photographers to attend a video-link in Paris.

He could now face the prospect of attempting to call the original French police officers, prosecuting officials or examining judges - some of whom have so far not been traced - who took the statements from the paparazzi and other witnesses.

His counsel, Ian Burnett QC, told the Court of Appeal that the Paul family lawyers, backed by the Paris Ritz Hotel, were seeking an opportunity to "examine witnesses as close to the horse's mouth as possible to enable them to explore the circumstances in which the statements were made".

Mr Burnett told Lords Justices Waller, Latham and Dyson that the High Court decision, if upheld, would "lead to illogical consequences and seriously disrupt these inquests (into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed) and other inquests into deaths overseas". It would make coroners' courts subject to stricter rules than applied in the civil or criminal courts and could be "very disruptive indeed".

Lawyers for Jean and Giselle Paul, supported by the Ritz, have argued that allowing the statements to be read to the jury without cross-examination would deny them the chance to challenge the paparazzi evidence. They said the coroner's decision was against Rule 37 of the 1984 Coroners' Rules which only allow such documentary evidence to be admitted if it is "unlikely to be disputed" and not objected to by the official "interested persons" in the case.