Case law for ESA claimant’s ‘unlikely’ story…

...if I remember I saw something where they decided that FTT should not have disregarded a claimant’s version of events just because it sounded ‘unlikely’. I might be wrong. If I am right could someone please post a link?

Thank you.

A finding that a version of events is merely unlikely, and so should be rejected without further ado, I would suggest is begging the question. Surely to have adequate reasoning to support their findings, the tribunal needs to say why they not only found it “unlikely”, but perhaps why it is “more likely” that another version of events is the case. Moreover, lots of events are “unlikely”, but that doesn’t go any way towards establishing that they didn’t actually happen.

Anyway, I don’t know if this is the case you were thinking of, but R(SB)33/85 gets cited on here a lot. It suggests that the test should really be something like: “is there some fact which renders the claimant’s story inherently improbable?” e.g. http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/7444/
That case approvingly quotes R(I)2/51:

The Tribunal may reach this conclusion even though the only evidence is that of the claimant himself. There is no rule of English law that corroboration of the claimant’s own evidence is necessary.  In some cases a Tribunal may rightly think that they cannot act on the claimant’s uncorroborated evidence either because it is self-contradictory or inherently improbable or because the claimant’s demeanour does not inspire confidence in his truthfulness. (It is seldom safe to reject evidence solely for this last reason and in the present case there is no criticism of the claimant’s demeanour; indeed it appears that the Tribunal did not hear evidence from the claimant himself, for they only record a statement by a representative of his association). There was nothing self-contradictory about the claimant’s statements and there was uncontradicted medical evidence that the hernia was likely to have happened in the manner stated by the claimant: nor was there any positive evidence that it happened in any other way. The Tribunal ought therefore to have accepted the claimant’s explanation of the cause of the injury unless there was some circumstance which rendered it inherently improbable.

R(I)2/51 is here - http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/ri/2_51a.pdf

R(SB) 33/85 is here - http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/rsb/33_85.pdf

Thank you. Appeal adjourned to request medical reports (not forthcoming from GP at our request). The above crossed my mind in preparation.