Day 041 - 28 Oct 94 - Page 66

     
     1   MR. MORRIS:  Seeing as I have been attacked I do want to come
     2        back.  I do not want to prolong it unnecessarily. First of
     3        all, as regards weekends, I am a single parent and as long
     4        as it is not between 8 o'clock in the morning and 8.30 at
     5        night, then, of course, I can prepare the whole weekend.
     6
     7        Secondly, as far as my cross-examination being relevant to
     8        the issues in the case, as far as I am concerned, every
     9        word, every question I have put to the witnesses is
    10        relevant to this case, in my opinion.  It is going to
    11        continue to be so.  There are underlying issues which
    12        Mr. Rampton may prefer not to be brought up which are
    13        relevant, because in some cases we may be challenging what
    14        are fairly accepted or may be accepted standards, for
    15        example, on advertising.  It is possible that none of the
    16        Plaintiffs' advertising is unlawful.  That does not mean to
    17        say we necessarily think it is something that should not be
    18        criticised.
    19
    20        So, we have to establish underlying issues, just as we had
         to with additives which Mr. Rampton specifically objected
    22        to, because if we are going to challenge the decisions of
    23        the British, European and international committees on the
    24        safety of additives, then obviously we have to go to
    25        underlying questions on how they could possibly be wrong.
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause there.  So far as the weekend is
    28        concerned, I can tell you that when I come to looking at
    29        what time you have got to prepare, I will take a good deal
    30        of persuading that it is not reasonable to say, "You ought
    31        to be able to do the equivalent of about one day's work at
    32        the weekend".  If you work all the weekend on it no one is
    33        going to be sane -- you are not going to be sane by the end
    34        of the case.  On the other hand, even with your parental
    35        obligations, you ought to be able to get in the equivalent
    36        of about one day's work over the weekend.
    37
    38        So far as cross-examination is concerned, what I want you
    39        to be able to do, when you plan your cross-examination, is
    40        know that you are in a particular box at the time so that
         if I get concerned, forget whether Mr. Rampton gets
    42        concerned, but if I get concerned about where we are going
    43        you can tell me.  If you have difficulty explaining quite
    44        shortly where we are going, it does make me wonder whether
    45        your eye is on the ball.  If you can straightaway say,
    46        "Well, this is the particular topic that is relevant",
    47        then it is easy for me to understand.  Do you see?
    48
    49   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  I think that is quite sensible.  The only
    50        thing is that sometimes I am not necessarily wanting the 
    51        witness to know exactly which particular theme we are 
    52        moving into that is relevant. 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The difficulty with that is that I am in
    55        control of the procedure in court and there is a limit to
    56        which I can rightly allow cross-examination to go ahead
    57        when I am not seeing what the relevance is and you do not
    58        feel able or prepared to tell me where it is.  I think you
    59        would be doing yourself a service if you were able, the
    60        moment I ask, "What are we on now?", to say, quite