Day 253 - 21 May 96 - Page 42
1 MR. MORRIS: We are happy to take that course. In fact, I can
2 rearrange the meeting with the solicitor but I know that
3 the Haringey camp is very keen to have a meeting on that
4 day to sort things out, because there are all sorts of
5 questions, but we are happy to start 10.30 on Thursday here
6 and try and get Mr. Nicholson finished on that day.
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, what I suggest, you do your best. If
9 the meeting must be on Thursday, rearrange it for some time
10 which means at least on Thursday we can sit until three
11 o'clock. Then we will call it a day until after the
12 vacation so far as this trial is concerned.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: I will do that.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What about the draft interlocutory
17 Mr. Rampton?
18
19 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the Defendants need leave. As to the
20 No. 1, I have done the best I can. We have sent the
21 Defendants the names of all the inquiry agents we know, we
22 have told them there is one employed by Bishops whose name
23 we do not know, and never did know, and that is the end of
24 No. 1 so far as we are concerned. It may be very well be
25 the employer knows the name, but that is not knowledge
26 within the knowledge within the knowledge of McDonald's.
27 There is nothing I can do about that. We have never known
28 that person, we do not know its gender, if I may put it
29 like that. No. 2, I do not have any information supplied
30 about No. 2 that the Defendants do not already have, except
31 that I think, and I willingly supply this now, Mr. Russell
32 whose first name is Jack, went by the name of Jack and gave
33 the additional information that he was Jack from Mitcham.
34 That is all that is known about that question.
35
36 No. 3, no, I would resist that. I have given the date of
37 every meeting attended by every agent at which anything
38 relevant to these proceedings, including the Defendants'
39 recent amendment, was raised or discussed or happened.
40 Meetings, if any, which they attended at which nothing
41 relevant happened, discussed or was discussed or raised are
42 not relevant. I add this, that no information relating to
43 inquiry agents that I do not intend to call is accessible
44 by the Defendants for the reason that that information
45 remains the subject of legal professional privilege and
46 there is quite a lot of argument about that, and the
47 conclusions reached about it in the authorities which I
48 have researched.
49
50 May I summarise what I take the legal position to be, for
51 which I owe to debt to Mr. Atkinson? It is this: that
52 where information is the subject of legal professional
53 privilege that privilege is only waived at the time when
54 the party who has the privilege deploys that information in
55 evidence. From that follows, for example, this
56 proposition: that the notes of the meetings which were
57 taken by the inquiry agents, and which we have in fact
58 disclosed, relating to the meetings that they attended are
59 quite obviously privileged information.
60
