Day 243 - 02 May 96 - Page 08
1 I resist that. I said, I think, a few days ago that
2 I, from now on, am resistent to these casual Civil Evidence
3 Act notices. If there is to be a Civil Evidence Act notice
4 in relation to this part of Miss Link's statement, it would
5 have to be done in the proper form.
6
7 It may very well be that I would want to go and speak, for
8 example, to Suzanne Shimmack and find out, in fact, what
9 she said. I might want to record the comments; I doubt it,
10 but I am entitled at this stage in the case to have things
11 down in the proper way and not for a casual so-called Civil
12 Evidence Act notice to be used as a way of getting into the
13 witness box now evidence which is plainly inadmissible as
14 matters presently stand.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If one party calls for the form to be
17 followed, it must be followed. In this particular case,
18 there is a good reason in common sense, quite apart from
19 just legal form, why it should, because if you did give a
20 Civil Evidence Act notice in relation to that, either you
21 or Barlow Lyde & Gilbert might discover the whole of what
22 Dr. Suzanne Shimmack actually said.
23
24 I have no -- listen to me, please, Mr. Morris -- reason to
25 believe that the quote which Miss Link has given is other
26 than the actual nub of it and a fair reflection of what she
27 said, but if a proper Civil Evidence Act notice is given,
28 and the other side does not accept it immediately, that is
29 the sort of thing which comes out in the wash that one
30 finds the whole of what is said. It may help you, it may
31 not, but it will no doubt give me a fuller picture.
32
33 MS. STEEL: Since the person referred to is in Germany, the
34 Plaintiffs would not be able to object to it, because they
35 could not force us to call her. When a Civil Evidence Act
36 notice was put on Mr. Arturo Woolf senior, I think it was
37 about two sentences of what he said and, obviously, we
38 objected and we did not have the whole of what he said to
39 compare it and see whether it had been taken out of
40 context, or whether that was really what he said, or
41 anything like that. It was just a report of a snippet of a
42 telephone conversation.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am afraid none of that matters. It is
45 basically as simple as this. I do not know where
46 Dr. Suzanne Shimmack is. I am only prepared to ignore the
47 rules of court if both parties agree, and in this case they
48 do not agree, and that is the end of the matter, so the
49 rules of court must be observed.
50
51 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I was not going to be argumentative about
52 that. I would like to correct something that Ms. Steel
53 said because this may be important. I think I told your
54 Lordship at the time (and we have now found the documents)
55 a Civil Evidence Act notice in respect of Mr. Woolf
56 senior's statement was actually served on the defendants by
57 post in August 1995.
58
59 MS. STEEL: But that does not alter the point that it was not
60 the entire conversation.
