Day 172 - 12 Oct 95 - Page 26
1 credibility or weight -----
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which are those?
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: They are the end of the second sentence: "I was
6 considered a bit of a phenomenon, so they let me get away
7 with it."
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which page?
10
11 MR. RAMPTON: Page 4, paragraph 7. Second sentence, he
12 says: "I was considered a bit of a phenomenon" -- refusing
13 to work extra hours, this is -- "so they let me get away
14 it, although people were regularly dismissed for behaving
15 like that without notice." Again, one wonders -- at least
16 I do -- what conceivable basis there could be for that
17 except hearsay. Unless he actually was present when such a
18 person -- and he says "regularly" -- on every occasion when
19 such a person was dismissed in those circumstances, it must
20 necessarily be hearsay.
21
22 We come back to a similar thing at the bottom of the
23 paragraph. There is a whole sentence, a complete sentence,
24 five lines up, which says: "It happened to a friend of
25 mine." Well, he says he remembers one occasion, and then
26 he continues: "It happened to a friend of mine." Again,
27 it could be something he witnessed, but it looks very much
28 to us as though that is simply a report of what the friend
29 told him.
30
31 Then I have the same problem, my Lord, with the last
32 sentence of this paragraph as I had with the last part of
33 the second sentence. He writes: "However it was more
34 common where management wanted to get rid of an employee
35 for them to force the unwanted employee to leave by being
36 particularly unpleasant to that employee." Whereas he may
37 be able to say that he remembers management being
38 unpleasant to employees and that they then left, what he
39 cannot possibly say is that that was done because the
40 management wanted to get rid of them. That is pure
41 speculation.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
44
45 MR. RAMPTON: Next, in paragraph 8, the second sentence is quite
46 obviously hearsay. That speaks for itself: "A friend of my
47 brother's worked at a McDonald's in Dublin and he was shown
48 all sorts of training videos when he started work." It
49 sounds as though that is double hearsay; it sounds as
50 though that is what the brother has told Magill.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If that came out, in fairness, I would have
53 to read into the next sentence "I was not shown any
54 training videos", would I not?
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, you would.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which is the only point which is being made
59 there, in any event.
60
