Choose Your Witnesses Carefully

A witness is only useful if their account will still hold up later, when it matters and somebody disagrees.

Take the inspection at the start of a lease. The landlord walks through alone, makes a few notes and later says the walls were freshly painted and the stove worked. The tenant remembers marks on the walls and a plate that never heated. Each of them is a witness, and neither is worth much, because each has an interest in the outcome and nothing to show for it. The argument over the deposit at the end of the lease will be settled by whoever has the better evidence, and right now nobody has any.

Stronger witnesses are chosen deliberately. Both parties walk through together, note every defect they spot and sign the same report. Photographs are taken on the day, room by room, with the file showing when they were taken. These witnesses do not change their story, and they do not move to another town.

The same thinking applies well beyond rentals. A buyer who wants a house inspected does better with an inspector who has no stake in the sale going through. A body corporate settling a dispute does better relying on minutes than on what the longest-serving trustee recalls. In each case the useful question is who, or what, will still be telling the truth about this a year from now.