Day 121 - 04 May 95 - Page 71


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, at some stage in the future, but not
     3        tomorrow, a list may be made of -- I am not being facetious
     4        if I say "dodgy documents", in the sense that it has
     5        occurred to one side or the other they want to rely on them
     6        and they may not have been strictly proved, so there may be
     7        some objection from the other side, and it may be a
     8        document of yours, it may be one of the surveys, for
     9        instance, where you are not sure whether it is agreed that
    10        should be admitted to be what is it is on the face of it,
    11        or there is some argument about its admissibility.  On
    12        Mr. Rampton's side it may be it is just by way of a example
    13        of computer print-out where he does not know whether he has
    14        to go through the form to establish it as an admissible
    15        document or not.  But it would, as a start towards that
    16        process, it would be helpful if, when you come in the
    17        morning, you are able to say in relation to the documents
    18        which Mr. Rampton has just enumerated: "Yes, we accept
    19        those as accurate printouts", giving the information which
    20        they purport to give, or:  "No, we do not accept this one,
    21        that one or the other one".
    22
    23   MS. STEEL:  Can I ask something. In terms of those documents,
    24        can we accept that they are accurate in the sense they are
    25        not forgeries, but without necessarily accepting that they
    26        would be one hundred per cent accurate in terms of what
    27        hours crew actually worked, because, I mean, a lot of our
    28        witnesses have said things like:  "Oh, if we were underage
    29        then at 10 pm we clocked off and it was entered as a
    30        bonus".  So we might be prepared to accept they are
    31        accurate as a minimum position, but not necessarily as an
    32        maximum.
    33
    34   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You should come back in the morning and say
    35        what you accept and what to what extent, and then the ball
    36        will then be in Mr. Rampton's court as to whether he
    37        can -----
    38
    39   MR. RAMPTON:  I can help about that as far as Ms. Steel question
    40        is concerned, which is a natural question for somebody in
    41        her position to ask.  All that happens is if a
    42        computer-generated document is admitted in evidence it
    43        becomes prima facie evidence of the truth of its contents.
    44        It is rebutable.  If your Lordship thought at the end of
    45        the case that, for one reason or another, the computer had
    46        been led into error by humans, why, then the figures would
    47        be discarded in favour of another -----
    48
    49   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What it means is that someone would pump that
    50        information into it, and it would be prima facie evidence 
    51        that that is what actually happened, but it would not, in 
    52        any way, mean that it was irrebutable.  If you called a 
    53        witness, whether it was a live witness, or a Civil Evidence
    54        Act witness, if you said: "I am down there for 40 hours and
    55        I worked 50" or "I am down there finishing at 10 pm, and I
    56        worked on until 1 o'clock", it would be just a question of
    57        whether one accepted that evidence, and if one thought that
    58        was a trustworthy witness, then, to that extent, the
    59        document would not be accepted as accurate evidence of what
    60        it appeared to show.

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