Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 50


     
     1        expertise a list that is relevant to the times pleaded.
     2
     3        I also wish to point out that the phrase "no imported beef"
     4        was not defined until 1989 as far as I know by the
     5        Plaintiffs in those documents they have disclosed.  Until
     6        that time the US labelling system made it virtually
     7        impossible to decide what was imported and what was
     8        domestic.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  This is not really discovery.  This is, as it
    11        were, an informal interrogatory as to who the suppliers
    12        were at that time.
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:  We have quoted from the book authorised by the
    15        Plaintiffs, circulated by the Plaintiffs, Behind the
    16        Arches, a section which refers to 170 suppliers in the
    17        mid-80s.  I cannot immediately get the reference, but if it
    18        helps the Plaintiffs in making their enquiries.
    19
    20   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What you are really saying is that the
    21        Plaintiffs saw fit to produce, in effect, a list of
    22        suppliers by way of producing specifications from or
    23        letters from a number of named suppliers choosing the years
    24        1989 and 1990 which are the years when they allege you
    25        participated in the publication.  Since you particularly
    26        picked on 1979, 1983 and 1984, they should be prepared to
    27        do the same in relation to those years.
    28
    29   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is your argument, is it?
    32
    33   MR. MORRIS:  Effectively, yes.  It has been in our pleadings
    34        from the first day of our pleadings that the US labelling
    35        system is -----
    36
    37   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I understand all about that.  What do you say
    38        about that?
    39
    40   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, two things.  First of all, if the
    41        Defendants had been in the slightest bit interested in this
    42        question until now, they would have gone to the suppliers
    43        whose identity is revealed by the discovery of the
    44        pre-existing documents in file 15, to which I have just
    45        drawn your Lordship's attention.  Those documents are
    46        necessarily disclosable because of the issue which the
    47        Defendants raise on the pleading, namely, when you say "no
    48        imported beef" you cannot be sure it does not come from a
    49        rainforest in Costa Rica for whatever that may be worth at
    50        the end of the case, those documents were disclosed. 
    51 
    52        It so happens that since they are in the form of statements 
    53        by people out of the jurisdiction, they also appear in the
    54        form of Civil Evidence Act statements in file 15.  Their
    55        primary appearance in the case was as disclosed documents.
    56
    57        The Defendants could have taken the opportunity -- I do not
    58        know when that discovery was made but it must have been
    59        some very considerable time ago -- on seeing that, what
    60        I take to be, comprehensive or exhaustive list of meat

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