Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 26
1 the documents which are in truth, as statement of facts,
2 probably inadmissible, and ask them whether they agree that
3 the facts stated in those documents should be treated as
4 facts, not a rebuttal of facts, but prime facie evidence of
5 truth of their contents; and they should do the same.
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I did suggest a few months ago now that a
8 list be made of computer printouts or survey results, so
9 that one can find out if there is agreement, as to what the
10 status is.
11
12 MR. RAMPTON: I believe that is something which we should try to
13 attend to before the end of the long vacation, I really do,
14 because otherwise we are going to be -----
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It would be ludicrous if in parts of my
17 judgment I were to say: "I have had lots of apparently
18 useful information from which I would draw these
19 conclusions which might be very helpful in deciding this
20 case, but in fact, since it does not amount to evidence,
21 having mentioned it, I have to put it completely on one
22 side."
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: Quite. If the Defendants do not accept the
25 admissibility of all or any of these documents, then we
26 have to go down -- because we shall want to rely on it as
27 records of fact -- the Civil Evidence Act road section by
28 section.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What at the moment I am minded to think is
31 that no party can say: "Because this document has been
32 produced by the other side, we will use that part of it",
33 but dispute the admissibility as evidence of another part
34 of it.
35
36 MR. RAMPTON: Plainly not, because it is not a question of the
37 effect of the words; it is a question of whether the
38 information is admissible as evidence at all.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Thank you.
41
42 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the next matter, I think Mr. Morris asked
43 for documents from America showing the length of service of
44 the hourly paid employees. He derived that application
45 from something Mr. Beavers said. I believe, having
46 reflected upon perhaps your Lordship's prompting, what
47 Mr. Stein said about it -- Mr. Stein is the person who
48 knows of course; although Mr. Beavers may have been trying
49 to help, as so many other people have done, it is perhaps
50 best to concentrate on what Mr. Stein said -- Mr. Morris,
51 I think, refined his application to an arbitrary group of
52 stores -- perhaps he said "Company owned" stores -- in
53 Chicago.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Chicago, yes.
56
57 MR. RAMPTON: My rhetorical question is: what on earth good
58 would that do? Even if it could be done easily by somebody
59 tapping a button in a shop, looking for that kind of
60 information, a further perhaps important question, or as
