Day 091 - 17 Feb 95 - Page 06
1 What I may ask you to do (and again I am not making a
2 decision on this) is whether you can assure me in relation
3 to any particular witness that by a certain time, you have
4 made contact with that witness in order to arrange for them
5 to attend. I merely raise that because that may be a
6 possible way of having some confidence that they will
7 actually come.
8
9 Think about that. If you are able to assure me in relation
10 to a named witness, for instance, or witnesses, "Yes, we
11 have got in contact with them and we are actually expecting
12 them to come to give evidence", for all I know the matter
13 may rest there. Do you understand?
14
15 MR. MORRIS: If the Plaintiffs have got a name of a witness and
16 they have got some evidence, then let them bring it. It is
17 not up to us to do that.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. You have a long list of witnesses which
20 it is said you intend to call. Again, I am not in any way
21 indicating what my decision may be on any of these
22 aspects. I just do not know until I have heard argument,
23 but with a view to saving time, if it can be saved and,
24 therefore, public costs, what I may have to consider is if
25 there is any real doubt as to whether a significant number
26 of a long number of witnesses will actually come to court,
27 what the order of witnesses ought to be.
28
29 It is one thing to say: "We intend to call those
30 witnesses", which may be no more than an expression, no
31 more than saying: "We will call them if we can" and
32 another being able to say to me: "We not only want to call
33 those witnesses, but we have made recent contact with them
34 and we understand that they are willing to come and,
35 therefore, we expect that they will come", that is all.
36
37 If you are able to do that, and there is absolutely no
38 reason why you should not be able to do that if they are
39 coming that I can think of because you have to get in touch
40 with them some way ahead so that arrangements can be made,
41 it may be that the matter will just be left there.
42
43 The main purpose of raising this at the moment -- I am not
44 making any decision on that -- is so that you can think
45 about what all the possibilities are.
46
47 Can I go back to the question of the immediate time-table
48 by which I mean over the next two weeks, next two calendar
49 weeks? Suppose that Mr. Rampton has some re-examination
50 of Mr. Gomez Gonzalez, how long do you expect him to be in
51 the witness box during that week?
52
53 MR. MORRIS: To be honest, we have no idea. We certainly have
54 not got through anywhere near the bulk of what we were
55 doing before, and we have not looked at it since.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, but you have next week to do that. Can
58 you not give any idea at all? A week is a very long time.
59 I appreciate there may be a number of matters you want to
60 deal with.
