Day 136 - 16 Jun 95 - Page 25
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2 MR. RAMPTON: Yes.
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- do you stick to that?
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6 MR. RAMPTON: I do stick that and I usually overestimate.
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8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Sometime about Thursday, if you bear it in
9 mind, Ms. Steel and Mr. Morris, perhaps Thursday afternoon,
10 I will ask you for your best estimate then for when
11 Mr. Stein is likely to finish. Then we can pencil in when
12 the argument is likely to be and Mr. Rampton can start
13 pencilling in his further employment witnesses.
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15 I repeat what I said yesterday, now that we have had
16 Mr. Sexton and Mr. Newton Brown, I would like you to give
17 some thought over the next week or so as to how long
18 remaining Plaintiffs' witnesses and the witnesses which you
19 can now anticipate you are going to call yourself on
20 employment are likely to take, because many of the
21 witnesses who have been called so far have been witnesses
22 who can speak as to McDonald's policy and matters of
23 potential general relevance outside particular matters of
24 fact they are giving evidence of, but within the near
25 future we are coming to quite a large number of witnesses
26 who are giving evidence, essentially, about particular
27 incidents or things which are alleged to have happened.
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29 I tried to indicate a few weeks ago that one could hope to
30 get through a number of those in any one day, some,
31 I appreciate, may take a few hours themselves, but I think
32 Mr. Sexton and Mr. Newton brown have been an indication
33 that one can get through some witnesses really quite
34 quickly.
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36 It was my idea that we have one on one day and one on
37 another, so I am not making any beef about lost time
38 yesterday or today but, as an example, we could in fact
39 have done Mr. Sexton, Mr. Newton Brown and another witness
40 in one day, going straight from examination-in-chief to
41 cross-examination and leaving you something like about 20
42 minutes between each witnesses, or giving you five or 10
43 minutes here and there between cross-examination and
44 evidence-in-chief. So, I want you to think about that.
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46 The second thing is this, that in relation to witnesses so
47 far, they have been scheduled on particular days and I have
48 made no complaint that there has not been another witness
49 waiting if we have finished one part way through a day.
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51 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am grateful for that, I must say.
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53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But, as I presently feel, when we come to the
54 shorter witnesses that does not apply. Rather than lose
55 half a day every now and again, I think we should be
56 prepared to risk having a witness waiting outside for half
57 or even a whole day and then not being reached and having
58 to come back the following day.
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60 One tries to avoid that because one must not just consider
