Day 050 - 10 Nov 94 - Page 27
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am merely asking you, please, will you do
2 that, because I think you may be putting yourself into a
3 position of taking a stand without sufficient information,
4 quite frankly about it.
5
6 MS. STEEL: The thing was, she was asked this morning about
7 whether she would be happy to come next week, and she
8 indicated that she was not. I did not speak to her,
9 but -----
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is not what you said to start with. You
12 said "not this week".
13
14 MS. STEEL: Someone went out to speak to her on the telephone,
15 and we asked her to ask Miss Dibb whether she would be
16 happy to come next week, and she indicated that she was
17 not.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: I will phone her again, and I will put to her the
20 objective terms and say we would like her to come.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You can say that my view at the moment is
23 that, if she is up to it -- and I stress that condition, if
24 she is up to it -- it is in everyone's interest in this
25 case that she gives her evidence on Monday or Tuesday of
26 next week.
27
28 MR. MORRIS: Can it be borne in mind, though, that our
29 impression, given by Mr. Rampton -- and I might say that a
30 great deal of my experience in the court has been by
31 observing Mr. Rampton and learning from him, and for that
32 I thank him -- has been that it is up to the parties when
33 they call their witnesses. We are being cooperative. We
34 do want the case to progress. We do want to fit people in
35 when they can be fitted in. But we, personally, feel
36 unhappy calling her if she indicates that she does not wish
37 to come.
38
39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand that.
40
41 MR. MORRIS: It ought to be -----
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: One has to make the further enquiry. The
44 reason I am more concerned at this stage than I have been
45 in certain areas in the past is that it has been obvious
46 that we are not going to complete the evidence on those
47 areas within the immediate future. We were not going to
48 complete recycling and waste before we broke off at the end
49 of July. It became clear that we might well have odds and
50 ends on nutrition which we will have to come back to.
51
52 Advertising is the first section we have come to where we
53 can all see that we might be able to hear all the evidence
54 on that topic, say, within two weeks, or something like
55 that, and not have any left-overs.
56
57 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So we would have actually managed to hear all
60 the evidence on one section of the case and then put it to
