Day 189 - 20 Nov 95 - Page 17

     
     1   MR. MORRIS:  He is here, but he has travelled all night and we
     2        have not had a chance to speak to him.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, I understand that.  Subject to
     5        Mr. Rampton, I am prepared to give you time to speak to Mr.
     6        Mrozek but, by the same token, as we have completed Mrs.
     7        Casey's evidence in less than an hour, I would have thought
     8        there ought to be every good prospect of completing Mr.
     9        Mrozek comfortably today, having given you a reasonable
    10        time to talk to him.
    11
    12   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  The thing is we do not have anything else
    13        scheduled for tomorrow and the day after.
    14
    15   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, but I do not want to have two days where
    16        we come into court and sit for an hour.  That seems to me
    17        to be completely unproductive.  Ms. Steel was saying a few
    18        days ago that because of the papers she found it very
    19        difficult to sit down and do any work on the case if she
    20        had less than a certain time available.  I disagreed with
         her assessment of how much time she needed available for it
    22        to be useful, but I accept, in principle, that it is better
    23        to have a longer time at a stretch than a series of small
    24        matters.
    25
    26   MR. MORRIS:  Nothing would please me more than to have two spare
    27        days to do work that is needed to be done, but I am just
    28        saying in this case I would prefer if we could be heard
    29        tomorrow morning so that I have a chance to speak to the
    30        witness and to give him a chance to recover from his
    31        travelling also.
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I cannot see that an overnight journey is
    34        going to debilitate Mr. Mrozek from giving evidence today.
    35        It is a completely inefficient use of court judge time and
    36        everyone else's time to sit for an hour today, go away and
    37        sit for what may be the same amount of time or not much
    38        longer tomorrow.  I read his letters before I came in this
    39        morning.  Let me just look again.
    40
    MR. MORRIS:  I was hoping you would have a chance to read
    42        Mr. Mehigan's transcript, you see.
    43
    44   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is completely unnecessary from the point
    45        of view of calling Mr. Mrozek.  I can see what is in
    46        Mr. Mrozek's statement.  As far as I can see, the one
    47        relevant point upon which he may be able to help the court
    48        is the allegation that he personally was victimised.  It
    49        cannot take very long to take instructions as to that and,
    50        subject to anything which Ms. Steel or Mr. Rampton wants to 
    51        say, I would propose to rise until 12.30, which gives you 
    52        50 minutes which is a very long time, and then come back 
    53        and get on with Mr. Mrozek's evidence on that topic.
    54
    55        If you want to ask him about the other topics which you
    56        have asked Mrs. Casey about, then I would have no objection
    57        to that, but we could start again at 12.30 and finish
    58        comfortably this afternoon.
    59
    60   MS. STEEL:  I would like to ask, if the feeling is that it