Day 172 - 12 Oct 95 - Page 25
1 supplementary statement?
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: It is on the first page, the second heading. Can
4 I ask your Lordship to keep -- I am going to have to come
5 back to this supplementary statement. There is a heading
6 "more than 39 hours in a week" with a "20" in brackets
7 after it. Obviously, he had been asked some questions
8 about his original statement -- not surprisingly, one might
9 think -- and he says this: "More than half the full-time
10 staff worked for more than 39 hours. This was quite
11 regularly although I do not have any dates or names of
12 anybody who did so. I cannot remember these details."
13 This is the important paragraph, the next one: "I rarely
14 did overtime"; and I ask the question: then how on earth
15 could he know that others did? He says: "The reason I know
16 that other people did it was because it was common
17 knowledge and that they had told me." That gives the game
18 away.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I take your point that you are referring to
21 that to back up your argument in relation to page 3, but
22 what, if anything, there do you seek to exclude?
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: That cannot stay anyway. He can say "I rarely did
25 overtime"; that is a statement of fact. But he cannot say
26 the first paragraph of that section, because of the last
27 sentence of the second paragraph of that section. The
28 reason he does not know any details is because all he knows
29 is that it was tittle tattle, rumour, gossip, chat in the
30 store, what they said. That is why he cannot give any
31 details, of course, because he does not know -- which is
32 not surprising, as he was rarely there himself for more
33 than 39 hours a week.
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
36
37 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the next one is slightly different; it is
38 a case of exaggeration. When one looks at the top of
39 page 4, he says: "A few people at the store even did
40 24 hour shifts." Plainly, he was asked about that, because
41 at the top of the first page of the supplementary statement
42 it says, under "24 hour shifts": "One person I can remember
43 working 24 hours shift was Joe. I cannot remember his
44 second name. I cannot remember any dates." It may only go
45 to the weight of what he says at the top of page 4, but
46 your Lordship may think that at the top of what is page 34
47 is quite obviously unsustainable and ought not to be
48 allowed to be read out in court. Quite plainly, if
49 Mr. Whatsisname, Mr. Magill, had come to court and he had
50 been cross-examined about it, he would not have been able
51 to give a sensible answer. One does not even know what the
52 source of his information about Joe is. But, taking your
53 Lordship's criterion, I do not say he cannot say what he
54 says about Joe, because it might be that he had personal
55 experience of that.
56
57 My Lord, I mention next two passages in paragraph 7 on
58 page 4 about which I am certainly extremely dubious, but
59 your Lordship may feel on balance that they could be left
60 in, provided always that when it comes to the question of
