Is there a legal term or doctrine that prevents one person from having two opposing opinions on the same matter?

Question

Hi I'm just wondering if there is a legal doctrine or legal term that essentially says that one person cannot have two different opinions on the same matter at the same time and have them both hold. For example (this is 100% hypothetical and has no real-life relevance to me), if a landlord said something like "You owe me $500 for cleaning" and also said "The place looks great and you owe me nothing..." I'm not asking what the outcome would be, I'm just wondering if this type of dissonance has a legal term or legal doctrine that would apply? Just as a totally made up example, maybe it's called something like "nolo duo mentis" indicating that one person cannot simultaneously have two opposing opinions on a matter. Thanks!

Answer 1

Legal doctrine has no bearing on the capacity of our minds to hold competing opinions.

In the context of a trial, the apparent contradictions you mention would simply be factors that a finder of fact would take into account when determining the credibility and reliability of a witness when they present evidence about what their state of mind was.

E.g. if a person testifies that they believed "X" and also that they believed "not X," the trier of fact can take that into account when deciding how much weight to give to their evidence.

In other contexts, the fact that A communicated "I believe X" to B could be used to establish the unreasonableness of B's belief that "A does not believe X." There is no term for this.

Answer 2

The term is "being human"

We all always hold contradictory opinions. For example, I would like to lose weight and I would like a chocolate cake.

However, in a legal proceeding, suppose a witness states something in evidence-in-chief that contradicts something they said or wrote in the past. In that case, the witness can be cross-examined on their "prior inconsistent statement" under s43 of the Evidence Act, which codifies a previous common law rule of evidence.

Why you might want to do that is to:

• elicit favourable evidence for your case. This works if the inconsistent statement helps your case, you can prove they said it, and you hope that they might make concessions towards it.
• attack the general credibility of the witness - the "liar, liar, pants on fire" angle.

Either way, tread softly because the witness may have a perfectly reasonable explanation: "I did say it was clean, but when the furniture was removed, there was a huge burned patch on the carpet, a hole in the wall behind the picture, and someone had taken a dump in the wardrobe. I couldn't see any of that at the time."