Day 079 - 27 Jan 95 - Page 07
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Follow the procedure which I ruled several
2 weeks ago and again yesterday you should follow in this
3 case. Give a copy of the document to the witness and a
4 copy to me and follow that procedure.
5
6 MS. STEEL: Can I just say, I am concerned about what
7 Mr. Rampton said yesterday about the fact that they made an
8 admission precisely to avoid publicity. Personally, I find
9 that is an abuse of the court procedure really.
10
11 MR. MORRIS: If they have made an admission, then I do not know
12 why there is any resistance to having the issue looked
13 into.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is not right, but let us just follow the
16 procedure I have said. Ask your question first and then if
17 you wish to contradict it, if you think that the witness
18 may change his answer when referred to the document, refer
19 me to the part of the document you want to look at.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: To be helpful, can I say that we have every
22 intention of calling, if necessary, a witness to verify the
23 document. If the Plaintiffs who say they have made their
24 admission to avoid press publicity now want to say that
25 their admission is not an admission -- as far as we are
26 concerned, it is an admission -- if we need to call a
27 witness to verify the official Public Health Laboratory
28 Report on the incident, we will do so. In the light of
29 that, and it was said yesterday, that if a witness is going
30 to come to verify a report, then that means that there
31 should be some leeway in referring -----
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, I said it sometimes happens as a matter
34 of indulgence. Since this is a matter of issue between the
35 parties, I am not going to allow myself any indulgence in
36 the matter. I am going to follow strictly what
37 I understand the legal position to do. If you are going to
38 call a witness to give admissible evidence of what is in
39 the document, do that in due course and it can wait until
40 then. For the time being, follow the procedure which
41 I have ruled that you should follow in relation to this.
42
43 MR. MORRIS: All I can say is that if people worry why this
44 trial is taking so long, they should think about the
45 Plaintiffs' conduct in us having to reinvent the wheel
46 virtually every day because of the position of the
47 Plaintiffs.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, that is an unjustified comment. It does
50 not help. Just carry on according to the rules of
51 procedure as I have said they are from time to time.
52
53 MS. STEEL (To the witness): Can you just turn to page 8 for the
54 moment? I just wanted to ask, the meetings which are
55 referred to here and which you have said that you
56 personally attended some of them, can you just tell us what
57 exactly was discussed at those meetings?
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let me suggest a way -- as far as you can now
60 recall, did you or representatives from your company attend
