Day 136 - 16 Jun 95 - Page 25


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- do you stick to that?
     5
     6   MR. RAMPTON:  I do stick that and I usually overestimate.
     7
     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.
    14
    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.
    28
    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.
    35
    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.
    45
    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.
    50 
    51   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I am grateful for that, I must say. 
    52 
    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.
    59
    60        One tries to avoid that because one must not just consider

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