Day 203 - 12 Jan 96 - Page 51
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2 MR. MORRIS: Moving on from that incident -----
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you just remind me? I am not considering
5 what may have happened in May or June, if anything, of
6 1991, but just let me look at Mr. Coton's evidence again.
7 Yes. When you have given the evidence you have just given
8 now you have been referring to the 1991 docking of pay?
9 A. Yes, indeed.
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11 Q. Not what may have happened as one incident or more than one
12 incident at some earlier time?
13 A. That is right.
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15 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, can I just take advantage of this hiatus
16 to make an observation? I have been a bit mystified really
17 where the Defendants think they are going. As I see it,
18 what your Lordship said this morning is at the heart of the
19 matter. Did Mr. Coton do it? Yes, by his own admission on
20 oath, he was caught. He did it on a far grander scale and
21 for a much longer time than Mr. Skehel ever knew at the
22 time or discovered at the time. That is No. 1.
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24 Second, why did he do it? Was it, as he said, because the
25 system made him do it, or was it because he was not a very
26 good Manager? As an adjunct to that, if he were right, did
27 Mr. Davis also do it? Why all this detail about when it
28 came up and what Miss Spurgeon said -- in fact, Mr. Coton
29 said, looking at the 1990 document: "Yes, Sally was doing
30 it and she was doing it on that occasion with my approval
31 and under my authority" ------
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33 MS. STEEL: If I could just say that actually about that
34 incident in 1990, Mr. Coton actually said that he did not
35 know about that at that time and that when he had carried
36 out this practice he did not do it on that kind of scale.
37 It was a few hours per time, not several, not, I do not
38 know how many, 15 people all at one go.
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40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I appreciate that is what he said but I ---
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42 MS. STEEL: Also, the point is -----
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44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- thought your case might be that, although
45 you have called Mr. Coton and you may feel some loyalty to
46 him, it was happening on a large scale; it had started with
47 Mark Davis, Mr. Coton kept it on quite a large scale and
48 that was because of the pressure which was put on managers
49 to meet their percentage targets, and things of that
50 nature. That is what I thought your case as Defendants in
51 this action was.
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53 MS. STEEL: Yes, and it is also the Plaintiffs' case that Ray
54 Coton was just a rogue manager. It is our case that
55 Mr. Skehel had it in for Ray Coton, which is why I was
56 putting the point about he was trying to blame this on Ray
57 Coton when, clearly, on the face of all the evidence in
58 front of him, it is actually Sally Spurgeon that done it
59 and Mr. ------
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